a 


-BRIGHT 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 

Kate  Gordon  Moore 


THE   HOUSE   OF   BONDAGE 


THE  HOUSE  ^BONDAGE 


By 


REGINALD  WRIGHT  KAUFFMAN 

Author  of  "What  is  Socialism  ?  "  etc. 


NEW  YORK 

MOFFAT,   YARD   AND   COMPANY 
1911 


COPYRIGHT,  igio,  BY 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


All  Rights  Reserved 

Published  August,  1910 

Second  Printing,  November,  1910 

Third  Printing,  December,  tgio 

Fourth  Printing,  January,  tgn 

Fifth  Printing,  February,  1911 

Sixth  Printing,  February,  1911 

Seventh  Printing,  March,  IQII 

Eighth  Printing,  March,  1911 

Ninth  Printing,  April,  ign 

Tenth  Printing,  April,  ign 

Eleventh  Printing,  June,  1911 

Twelfth  Printing,  July,  1911 


THE    OUINN    *    BOOEN    CO.  PRE1S 


PS 


TO 

ANDREW 'JOHN    KAUFFMAN 

(i 840-1899) 

"O  strong  soul,  by  what  shore 
Tarriest  thou  now?    For  that  force, 
Surely,  has  not  been  left  vain ! 
Somewhere,  surely,  afar, 
In  the  sounding  labor-house  vast 
Of   being,   is  practiced   that   strength, 
Zealous,  beneficent,  firm !  " 


857461 


CAVEAT   EMPTOR 

THIS  story  is  intended  for  three  classes  of  readers, 
and  no  more.  It  is  intended  for  those  who  have  to 
bring  up  children,  for  those  who  have  to  bring  up 
themselves,  and  for  those  who,  in  order  that  they 
may  think  of  bettering  the  weaker,  are,  on  their  own 
part,  strong  enough  to  begin  that  task  by  bearing 
a  knowledge  of  the  truth. 

For  it  is  the  truth  only  that  I  have  told.  Through 
out  this  narrative  there  is  no  incident  that  is  not  a 
daily  commonplace  in  the  life  of  the  underworld  of 
every  large  city.  If  proof  were  needed,  the  news 
papers  have,  during  the  last  twelvemonth,  proved 
as  much.  I  have  written  only  what  I  have  myself 
seen  and  myself  heard,  and  I  set  it  down  for  none 
but  those  who  may  profit  by  it. 

REGINALD  WRIGHT  KAUFFMAN. 

NEW  YORK  CITY, 

i6th  June,  igio. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  "  As  IF  THE  SPRING  WERE  ALL  YOUR  OWN  "      .  i 

II.  A  DEED  OF  TRUST 10 

III.  THE  SPECTER  OF  FEAR 28 

IV.  AWAKENING 5° 

V.  THE  BIRDS  OF  PREY 61 

VI.  AN  ANGEL  UNAWARES 71 

VII.  HOLIDAY 84 

VIII.  MR.  WESLEY  DYKER 98 

IX.  THE  COURT  OF  A  MERCHANT-PRINCE      .       .       .  107 

X.  ANOTHER  SPHERE 123 

XI.  UNDER  THE  LASH 138 

XII.  ON   STRIKE 151 

XIII.  JAIL-DELIVERY 171 

XIV.  RIVINGTON  STREET 192 

XV.  IMPARTIAL   JUSTICE 213 

XVI.  SANCTUARY 232 

XVII.  "A  NET  BY  THE  WAYSIDE" 247 

XVIII.  IN  SERVICE 264 

XIX.  "  FIAT  JUSTITIA  RUAT  CAELUM  "  284 

XX.  THE  SANCTITY  OF  THE  HOME 292 

XXI.  AN  ANCIENT  PROBLEM 304 

XXII.  THE  SERPENTS'  DEN 323 

XXIII.  KATIE'S  DAY 342 

XXIV.  MARIAN'S  WAY .       .  355 

XXV.  DAUGHTERS  OF  ISHMAEL 371 

XXVI.  "  THE  LEAST  OF  THESE  " 386 

XXVII.  JUDGMENT 404 

XXVIII.  HUSKS  OF  THE  SWINE 414 

XXIX.  THE  DOORS  OF  THE  SHADOW 437 

XXX.  HER  FATHER'S  HOUSE 452 


"  AS  IF  THE  SPRING  WERE  ALL  YOUR  OWN  " 

THE  local  weather-prophets — the  cape-coated 
Mennonites  and  the  bearded  Amishmen,  who 
came  into  the  town  to  market — had  said,  with 
choral  unanimity,  that  the  spring  would  be  brief 
and  sudden,  and  the  summer  parching  and  intense. 

Already,  though  April  had  but  dawned,  the  pink 
arbutus  had  bloomed  and  withered,  and  the  pale  first 
violets  were  peeping,  purple  and  fragrant,  among 
the  lush  grass  of  the  front  yards  on  Second  Street. 
The  annual  oriole  was  a  full  fortnight  ahead  of  his 
time  in  opening  his  summer-house  in  the  hickory-tree 
on  the  Southwarks'  lawn;  and  up  in  the  droning 
study-room  of  the  high-school,  where  all  the  windows 
were  wide  to  the  lazy  sunlight,  Miss  England  had 
begun,  this  week,  to  direct  the  thoughts  of  her 
dwindling  senior-class  toward  the  subjects  of  their 
graduation  essays. 

Swaying  with  the  easy,  languid  grace  of  an  un 
studied  young  animal,  Mary  Denbigh,  the  morning- 
session  ended,  turned  from  the  graveled  walk  before 
the  school-grounds  into  the  little  town's  chief  thor 
oughfare. 


2  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Nobody  had  ever  called  her  pretty,  but  her  light 
serge  skirt  had  that  day  been  lengthened  to  her 
ankles,  and  Mary  was  wholly  conscious  of  the  new 
tokens  of  her  growth.  Lithe,  strong-limbed  and 
firm-bodied,  of  peasant  stock  and  peasant  vigor, 
youth  and  health  and  the  open  country  air  were  not 
factors  sufficiently  unfamiliar  to  combine  in  a  charm 
that  would  attract  admiration  in  her  own  community. 
Only  a  jaded  city-gaze — and  a  well-trained  city-gaze 
at  that — would  have  seen  in  the  blue  eyes,  the  red 
mouth,  the  straight  nose,  pink  cheeks,  and  abundant 
russet  hair,  any  promise  worthy  of  fulfillment, — 
could  have  detected  the  flower  in  the  bud;  and  that 
such  a  gaze  should,  on  this  day  of  all  days,  have  been 
leveled  in  the  girl's  direction  was,  perhaps,  only  one 
of  those  grim  jests  of  a  Fate  that  loves  to  play  upon 
the  harmony  between  man  and  nature,  and  that  here 
observed  the  coming  of  a  human  spring  that  must 
be  brief  and  sudden,  a  human  summer  parching  and 
intense. 

The  usual  group  of  idle  residents  and  idling  com 
mercial  drummers  were  sitting  at  the  plate-glass  win 
dow  of  the  hotel  as  she  went  by,  but  the  girl  did 
not  see  them.  Passing  among  objects  of  long  fa 
miliarity,  she  saw,  in  fact,  nothing  until,  in  a  side- 
street,  she  heard  a  rapid  step  behind  her,  was  covered 
by  an  approaching  shadow  and,  half-turning,  found 
someone,  a  stranger,  at  her  side. 

"How  d'y1  do,  liddlegirl?" 

Mary  looked  up ;  but  she  was  quite  too  startled  to 
observe  anything  save  that  the  speaker — she  could 
not  have  told  whether  he  were  man  or  boy — was  at 
once  dark  and  rosy,  smiling  and  serious,  hat  in  hand, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  3 

and,  beyond  all  speculation,  no  citizen  of  her  own 
borough. 

"  I  don't  know  you,"  she  said. 

She  flushed  quickly,  and  strode  forward.  It  was, 
she  knew,  no  uncommon  thing  for  the  girls  of  her 
acquaintance  to  be  "picked  up,"  as  they  called  the 
process,  by  some  fellow-townsman  that  had  never 
been  formally  presented  to  them;  but  the  process 
was,  as  she  also  knew,  one  that  lost  its  propriety 
when  extended  to  aliens. 

The  present  alien  was,  nevertheless,  not  easily  to 
be  dismissed.  He  fell  into  her  gait,  and  walked 
facilely  beside  her. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said  in  the  humblest  and 
most  unobjectionable  tones.  "  I  don't  mean  to  be 
rude  to  you,  honest,  I  don't.  I'm  a  traveling-man, 
you  see^ " 

Mary  was  striding  rapidly  ahead,  her  full  mouth 
now  drawn  firm,  her  blue  eyes  fixed  on  the  vanishing- 
point. 

"  I  don't  care  what  you  are,"  she  answered. 

"  All  righd,"  he  pleaded.  "  All  I  vant  now  is  a 
chanc't  to  exblain.  I've  chust  started  out  traveling 
for  my  fader,  who's  a  big  distiller  in  N'York.  I've 
got  to  stay  in  this  hole  for  a  vhile,  un'  I'm  not  used 
to  the  beesness,  un'  I'm  lonesome,  un'  I  only  von- 
dered  if  you  vouldn't  go  vith  me  to  a  moving-picture 
show,  or  something,  this  evening." 

The  best  way  to  deal  with  such  a  situation  is  a 
way  that  is  easiest  for  the  inexperienced  and  the 
unpolished.  Mary  was  both.  For  the  first  time 
since  he  had  begun  to  walk  beside  her,  she  now, 
coming  to  a  defiant  stop,  faced  her  annoyer* 


4  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I  don't  know  you,"  she  repeated.  "  I've  told 
you  that  onc't,  and  you'd  better  not  make  me  tell 
you  any  more  still.  I  live  the  second  door  round 
the  coming  corner,  and  my  pop  is  a  puddler  an' 
weighs  two  hundred  and  ten  pounds!  " 

Again  she  wheeled  and  again  resumed  her  home 
ward  march;  and  this  time  she  walked  alone.  If  she 
heard,  dimly,  behind  her  a  confused  murmur  of  re 
sponse,  she  did  not  hesitate  to  learn  whether  the 
words  were  expressions  of  further  apology  or  new 
born  dismay,  and  when  she  ran,  flushed  and  panting, 
up  the  three  wooden  steps  to  the  two-story  brick 
house  that  was  her  home,  though  she  could  not  then 
deny  herself  one  backward  glance,  that  glance  re 
vealed  to  her  only  an  empty  corner.  The  pursuit 
had  ended. 

She  flung  open  the  light  door  that  was  never  locked 
by  day,  walked  down  the  short,  darkened  hall,  past 
the  curtain  of  the  equally  darkened  parlor,  through 
the  dining-room  with  its  pine  table  covered  by  a  red 
cotton  cloth,  and  so  into  the  small,  crowded  kitchen, 
where  her  mother  fretted  and  clattered  above  the 
highly  polished  range. 

Mrs.  Denbigh  was  a  little  Pennsylvania-German 
woman,  whom  a  stern  religion  and  a  long  life  of 
hard  work  had  not  intellectually  enlarged.  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  she  had  borne  eight  children,  of 
whom  Mary  was  the  seventh,  her  sympathies  had 
failed  to  broaden,  and  her  equally  religious  and 
equally  hard-working  Welsh  husband  used  often  to 
remark  to  her,  during  his  one-monthly  evening  of 
intoxication,  that  he  was  glad  indeed  she  was  to  have 
no  more  progeny,  since,  somehow  or  other,  she 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  5 

"  seemed  to  git  wuss  tempered  with  every  innocent 
youngling  as  koom  to  'un."  Whether  this  criticism 
was  or  was  not  precise,  it  is  at  least  true  that  much 
drudgery  had  not  improved  the  weary  woman's  tem 
per;  that  the  long  years  before  her  husband  rose  to 
his  present  wages — years  during  which  his  wife  had 
not  only  kept  a  house  and  reared  a  family,  but  had 
also  added  to  the  communal  income  by  night-work 
as  a  dress-maker — had  left  her  gray  and  stooped 
and  hatchet- f aced ;  and  that,  though  of  a  race  in 
which  the  maternal  instinct  runs  almost  to  a  passion, 
her  patience  with  her  remaining  pair  of  home-biding 
children  was  frequently  fragile  and  short. 

Just  now  she  looked  up,  a  spoon  in  one  hand  and 
a  pan  in  the  other,  her  forehead  damp,  as  always, 
with  sweat,  and  her  harassed  eyes  momentarily  bright 
with  anger. 

"  Where  on  earth  have  you  been,  anyways?  "  she 
shrilly  inquired  of  Mary. 

The  girl's  face  instantly  hardened  from  the  ex 
citement  of  her  recent  adventure  to  the  sullenness 
behind  which  she  always  took  refuge  in  these  more 
usual  domestic  crises.  What  she  might  have  con 
fessed  had  she  come  home  to  a  less  overworked 
mother,  it  is,  obviously,  vain  to  conjecture;  what 
she  actually  did  was  to  lock  within  her  breast  the 
story  that  had  been  trembling  on  her  red  lips,  and 
what  she  replied  to  Mrs.  Denbigh's  question  was  an 
ungracious : 

"  Been  at  school.    Where  d'you  think?  " 

The  mother  straightened  up  as  far  as  her  long- 
stooped  shoulders  would  permit. 

"  Think?  "  she  echoed.    "  I  guess  I  can  guess  still 


6  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

where  you  was.  'Less  you  was  kep'  in,  you  had 
ought  t'  been  home  five  minutes  ago,  an'  nobody's 
kep'  in  only  five  minutes.  You've  been  flirtin'  with 
some  idiot  of  a  boy  on  the  street-corner  yet — that's 
about  what  you've  been  doin'  1  " 

It  was  a  random  shot,  and  one  fired  from  no  pre 
vious  knowledge,  but  the  girl  at  once  realized  that, 
had  any  neighbor  chanced  to  see  what  had  actually 
occurred,  this  parental  construction  would  appear  to 
have  some  foundation  in  fact.  The  thought  was 
enough  to  seal  the  locked  gate  in  her  breast. 

"  That  ain't  so!  "  she  said,  with  childish  fury.  "  I 
come  straight  home,  like  I  always  do.  If  you  want 
me  to  help  more  with  the  work  than  I  do  help,  why 
don't  you  let  me  quit  school?  I  don't  want  to  go 
any  more,  anyhow." 

There  are  some  families  in  which  the  passing  of 
the  lie  is  no  such  uncommon  or  serious  offense,  and 
the  Denbigh  menage  was  one  of  them.  It  was,  there 
fore,  upon  the  latter  portion  of  Mary's  speech  that 
her  mother,  at  this  time,  seized. 

"  You'll  go  to  school  as  long  as  your  pop  and  me 
say  you  must!  "  she  retorted. 

"  You  let  our  Etta  quit  when  she  was  in  the 
grammar  school,"  expostulated  Mary,  with  an  ap 
peal  to  the  precedent  of  the  successfully  married  sis 
ter,  who  was  now  a  next-door  neighbor.  "  You  let 
her  quit  then,  and  now  I'm  in  the  high." 

Had  Mrs.  Denbigh's  rejoinder  been  in  accordance 
with  the  facts,  she  would  have  said  that  all  she 
wanted  to  do  was  to  give  her  daughter  as  much  of 
an  education  as  was  compatible  with  the  proper  con 
duct  of  the  Denbigh  domestic  economy.  But  tired 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  7 

women  are  no  more  apt  to  indulge  in  analytical  ex 
position  than  are  tired  men,  and  so  it  chanced  that 
her  next  speech,  accompanied  by  a  gesture  that  raised 
the  cooking-spoon  aloft,  was  a  torrent  of  words  un 
expectedly  interrupted. 

"  In  the  high?"  she  repeated.  "Well,  I  know 
where  you'll  be  in  one  minute,  still,  if  you  don't  right 
away " 

She  brought  the  spoon  forward  with  a  mighty 
swoop,  but  its  parabola,  in  crossing  the  stove,  sent 
it  into  violent  contact  with  the  pot  that  held  the  stew 
destined  for  the  noon  dinner.  The  pot  was  balanced 
on  the  edge  of  an  aperture  in  the  stove  whence  the 
lid  had  been  removed.  The  vessel  fell,  and  its  con 
tents  belched  upon  the  burning  coals. 

Mrs.  Denbigh  gave  one  look  at  the  steaming  ruin, 
and  then  seized  the  already  retreating  Mary.  The 
girl's  struggles,  her  cries,  the  dignity  of  the  newly 
lengthened  skirt,  avail  nothing.  A  dozen  times 
the  mother's  arm  descended  in  stinging  castiga- 
tion,  and  then  she  hurried  her  daughter  into  the 
hall. 

"  You  git  right  back  to  school !  "  she  ordered. 
"  I  don't  care  if  you're  a  half-hour  early — you're 
mostly  late  enough.  You've  spoiled  your  own  din 
ner  and  mine  and  little  Sallie's,  so  you  don't  git 
nothin'  to  eat  still  till  evening.  You'll  go  to  school, 
and  you'll  keep  on  goin'  till  your  pop  an'  me  tells 
you  to  quit!  " 

Mary  looked  at  the  woman  without  a  word,  and 
then,  still  without  a  word,  passed  through  the  front 
door  and  banged  it  behind  her. 

But  she  did  not  walk  in  the  direction  of  the  school; 


8  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

she  was  not  going  to  school.  The  rebel-spirit  of  youth 
choked  her,  and  turned  her  feet,  almost  without  will 
of  her  own,  toward  the  river. 

She  crossed  the  railroad  tracks,  came  to  the  dis 
used  towpath  and  followed  it  for  a  mile  beyond  the 
town.  Far  westward  she  went,  "  walking,"  as  she 
would  have  said,  "  her  madness  down,"  and,  hungry 
though  she  now  was,  she  did  not  rest  until  at  last, 
as  late  as  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  she  sat  on 
a  rock  at  the  point  where  the  Susquehanna  curves 
between  the  sheer  precipice  of  Chicques  on  the  Lan 
caster  County  side  and  the  hooded  nose  of  the  high 
hill  they  call  the  Point,  upon  the  other. 

The  flood  of  rebellion  had  ceased,  but  a  steady 
and  enduring  stream  of  resolution  remained. 

Across  the  sweep  of  eddies  she  saw  the  nearer  hills 
already  shedding  the  browns  and  blacks  of  winter's 
bared  limbs  and  pine  branches  for  the  tenderer  green 
of  a  gentler  season.  The  cultivated  portions  of  the 
summits  were  already  rich  with  coming  life.  Be 
hind  her  rolled  the  Donegal  Valley,  where  the  crops 
were  even  then  germinating.  Birds  were  mating  in 
the  sap-wet  trees  beside  the  water,  and  from  the 
flowering  seeds  there  came  the  subtle,  poignant  scent 
of  a  warm  April. 

Something — something  new  and  nameless  and 
wonderful — rose  in  her  throat  and  left  her  heart 
hammering  an  answer  to  the  new  world  around  her. 
She  was  glad — glad  in  spite  of  all  her  anger  and 
her  hunger;  glad  that  she  had  not  told  her  mother 
of  the  boy — for  he  must  have  been  a  boy — whom 
she  had,  after  all,  so  needlessly  reprimanded;  but 
glad,  above  everything  else,  for  some  reason,  for 


some  intoxication  that  she  might  neither  then  nor 
ever  after  completely  understand. 

Her  cheeks  glowed  a  deeper  pink;  her  blue  eyes 
glistened;  she  opened  her  red  mouth  to  the  seductive 
sun  and,  with  a  sweep  of  her  firm  hands,  flung  loose 
her  russet  hair  to  the  breeze.  Looking  out  at  the 
distant  fields,  she  sprang  to  her  feet  again  and 
walked,  swaying  with  the  easy,  languid  grace  of  an 
unstudied  young  animal. 

The  fields  reminded  her  of  the  rural  prophets. 
It  was  evident,  she  thought,  that  they  were  right: 
this  year's  was  to  be  a  spring  brief  and  sudden,  a 
summer  parching  and  intense. 


II 

A  DEED  OF  TRUST 

MARY  DENBIGH  could  not  remember  the 
day  when  the  holy  estate  of  matrimony  had 
not  been  held  up  to  her  by  others  as  the 
whole  destiny  of  woman  and  had  not  presented  it 
self  as  the  natural,  the  easy,  the  sole  path  of  escape 
from  filial  servitude. 

She  belonged,  as  has  been  intimated,  to  a  race  in 
which  motherhood  is  an  instinctive  passion  and  an 
economic  necessity,  and  she  was  born  into  a  class 
in  which  not  to  marry  is  socially  shameful  and  ma 
terially  precarious.  When  she  was  very  small,  her 
own  dolls  were  her  own  children  and  her  playmates' 
dolls  her  children-in-law,  and,  when  she  grew  older, 
she  had  always  before  her  the  sedulously  maintained 
illusion  of  emancipation  worn  by  those  girls,  but  a 
few  years  her  seniors,  who  had  given  up  the  drudgery 
of  childhood,  which  she  hated,  for  the  drudgery  of 
wifehood,  which  they  loftily  concealed.  A  young 
wife  was  a  superior  being,  whose  condition  was  not 
at  all  to  be  judged  by  the  known  condition  of  one's 
mother,  and  all  the  other  and  more  intimate  rela 
tions  of  marriage  remained,  to  the  uninitiate,  a 
charmed  mystery.  If  it  seems  strange  to  us  that 
this  mystery  and  this  innocence  remained  to  Mary 
at  sixteen,  the  reflection  rests  not  upon  her  from 

10 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  n 

whom  the  secret  kept  its  secrecy,  but  upon  us  to 
whom  the  innocence  appears  remarkable. 

From  a  house  that  exacted  everything  and  forgave 
nothing,  a  narrow  house,  which  she  could  not  see 
as  simply  an  inevitable  result  of  conditions  as  wide 
as  the  world,  the  girl  looked  out  to  that  wonderful 
house  next  door  where  her  sister  had,  only  three 
years  before,  been  taken  as  a  bride.  This  sister  was 
now  an  elegant  person,  who  said  "  fore-head," 
"  of-ten,"  and  "  a-gain,"  but  Mary  could  remember 
Etta,  in  gingham  frock  and  apron,  performing  the 
tasks  that  were  now  enforced  upon  Mary  herself. 
And  she  could  now  observe — as,  indeed,  her  sister's 
wholly  conscious  pride  well  intended  that  she  should 
observe — Etta  in  clothes  that  were  beyond  the  reach 
of  an  unmarried  daughter  of  Owen  Denbigh;  Etta 
going  to  dances  forbidden  to  a  Denbigh  maid. 
When  she  climbed  reluctantly  to  bed  at  ten  o'clock, 
Etta's  lights  blazed  always  wide  awake,  and  when 
she  rose  in  the  gray  of  the  morning,  Etta's  shutters 
were  luxuriously  closed. 

Every  dawn  Mary  must  pack  her  father's  dinner- 
bucket,  as  Etta  used  to  pack  it,  before  Owen  started 
for  the  mill.  That  done,  and  the  hurried  breakfast 
eaten,  she  must  make  her  own  bed  and  wash  the 
dishes  before  she  set  out  for  school.  At  noon  there 
were  more  dishes,  and  only  every  other  evening, 
before  sitting  down  to  detested  study  by  the  kero 
sene  lamp  in  the  dining-room,  was  she  relieved  of 
still  more  dish-washing  by  the  growing,  and  appar 
ently  too  favored,  younger  sister,  Sallie. 

The  evening  that  followed  Mary's  truant  walk 
along  the  river  was  one  of  those  when  she  should 


12  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

have  been  granted  this  modicum  of  relief,  but  now, 
after  the  brief  five  o'clock  supper,  tow-headed  Sallie 
set  up  a  wail  as  the  table  was  cleared. 

"What's  the  matter  with  you  now?"  demanded 
Mrs.  Denbigh,  her  harassed  eyes  blinking  in  the 
lamplight,  and  her  hatchet-face  more  than  commonly 
sharp. 

"I  ain't  feelin'  good,"  said  Sallie.  "I'm  tired; 
I'm  sick;  I  don't  want  to  wash  no  dishes." 

Mrs.  Denbigh  shot  a  glance  through  the  double- 
doorway  to  the  littered  parlor;  but  the  face  of  her 
unattentive  husband  was  hidden  behind  the  crinkling 
sheets  of  the  Daily  Spy,  gripped  by  one  great,  grimy 
fist,  while  the  stubby  forefinger  of  the  other  hand 
spelled  out  the  short  syllables  of  the  personal-column, 
facetiously  headed  "  Our  Card-Basket."  His  huge 
bulk  bulged  over  all  the  edges  of  the  uncomfortable 
patent  armchair  in  which  he  was  sitting:  a  picture 
of  gorged  contentment,  there  was  as  yet  no  help  to 
be  expected  from  him. 

It  was  Mary,  experienced  in  such  attacks,  who 
made  ready  to  defend  the  law. 

'*  You  ain't  sick,"  she  declared. 

"  I  am,  tool  "  sniffed  Sallie.    "  I'm  awful  sick  I  " 

"  Get  out :  you  et  more'n  I  did.  You  just  want 
to  make  me  do  the  work,  an'  I  won't,  'cause  it's 
your  turn.  So  there  1  " 

Mary's  homecoming  had,  as  it  happened,  not  been 
the  signal  for  a  renewal  of  hostilities  between  her 
mother  and  herself.  The  former  had  just  then  been 
too  hard  at  work  to  have  either  energy  or  thought 
in  that  direction,  and  throughout  the  evening  meal 
the  girl  had  deemed  it  wise  to  maintain  a  reticence 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  13 

calculated  to  keep  her  in  the  domestic  background. 
Now,  however,  she  had  impulsively  come  forward, 
and  the  step  at  once  brought  her  to  Mrs.  Denbigh's 
attention. 

"  After  what  you  done  this  noon,"  she  said  to 
Mary,  "  you'd  better  keep  your  mouth  shut.  Go 
and  wash  them  dishes!  " 

But  Mary  knew  that  she  had  now  gone  too  far 
to  retreat. 

"  It  wasn't  my  fault  the  stew  was  spilled,"  she 
protested;  "and  anyhow,  you  did  lick  me  onc't  for 
that.  Sallie  just  wants  to  shove  her  work  off  on 


me." 


"  I  don't,"  blubbered  Sallie.  "  I'll  do  'em  some 
evenin'  when  it's  your  turn." 

"  Yes,"  Mary  sneered,  "  I  know  how  you  will." 

"I  will— I  will— I  will  so!" 

Sallie's  voice  rose  to  a  shrill  shriek,  and  then  sud 
denly  broke  off  in  the  middle  of  a  note:  there  was 
a  sound  of  elephantine  stirring  from  the  parlor,  and 
the  feared  master  of  the  house,  moved  at  last  from 
his  lethargy,  rolled  into  the  double  doorway  and 
seemed  nearly  to  block  it. 

One  of  the  young  reporters  of  The  Spy  had  once 
remarked — not  in  print — that  Owen  Denbigh  re 
sembled  nothing  so  much  as  the  stern  of  an  armored 
cruiser  seen  from  a  catboat.  How  much  of  the  cover 
ing  of  his  powerful  frame  was  fat  and  how  much 
muscle  is  matter  for  conjecture;  his  life  in  the  iron 
mills  had  certainly  given  him  a  strength  at  least 
approaching  the  appearance,  and  had  blackened  his 
large  hands,  reddened  his  big  face,  and  grayed  his 
bristling  hair  and  his  fiercely  flaring  mustache. 


i4          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Whad's  ahl  this  devil's  racket?  "  he  shouted,  in 
the  voice  he  used  in  triumphing  over  the  turmoil  of 
the  puddling-furnace. 

Both  children  quailed  before  him,  each  prepared 
regardless  of  its  merits,  for  acquittal  or  condemna 
tion,  as  he  might  decide  the  issue.  Even  Mrs.  Den* 
high  drew  back  and  set  her  lips  to  silence. 

The  giant  raised  a  threatening  hand. 

"  Be  ye  ahl  gone  deef  ?  "  he  demanded.  "  Whad's 
ahl  this  devil's  racket  fur?  " 

In  a  panic  of  self-preservation,  the  two  girls 
began  at  once  to  clamor  forth  their  woes. 

"  Sallie  won't  wash  the  dishes!  "  cried  Mary. 

"  I'm  sick,"  sobbed  Sarah,  "  an'  mom  says  Mary 
must  wash  'em  because  she  upset  the  stew  this  noon 
time!" 

In  the  merits  of  any  case  brought  before  him,  the 
household  Solomon  was  as  little  interested  as  if  he 
had  been  the  judge  of  a  law-court.  His  years  of 
overwork  had  limited  his  sense  of  a  just  division  of 
toil  among  others,  and  his  long  oppression  by  task 
masters  had  made  himself  a  merciless  task-master. 
Like  the  men  that  had  driven  him,  he  delighted  most 
in  driving  those  who  were  the  hardest  to  drive. 
Sallie  was  too  young  to  furnish  appreciable  resistance, 
but  in  the  awakening  Mary  he  now  saw  something 
that  approached  worthy  opposition.  He  turned  first 
to  his  wife. 

"  Did  you  tell  'er,"  he  inquired,  his  stubby  fore 
finger  leveled  at  Mary — "  did  you  tell  'er  to  wash 
'un?" 

Mrs.  Denbigh  bowed  her  sweating  forehead  in 
timid  assent. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  15 

Then  the  father  looked  again  at  the  offender. 

"  Wash  'un  1  "  he  ordered,  and  marched  back  to 
his  parlor,  his  armchair,  and  his  evening  paper. 

Mary  knew  her  father  too  well  not  to  know  also 
the  price  of  disobedience.  Sullenly,  but  without  hesi 
tation,  she  retreated  to  the  little  kitchen  and  took 
up  her  uncongenial  task. 

Girlhood,  then,  must  be  denied  much  of  its  claim 
to  recreation;  the  social  machine  was  pitiless.  Young 
life  was  a  period  of  menial  service  from  which  the 
sole  escape  was  marriage,  whether  to  stranger  or 
to  friend.  That  a  stranger  should  harm  her  was, 
to  Mary — as  it  is  to  most  girls  of  her  age  and  en 
vironment — an  idea  unentertained:  strangers  were 
too  few,  and  the  world  of  moral  fact  too  closely 
shut  and  guarded.  Boys  she  had  always  been  cau 
tioned  against  in  vague  generalities;  but  she  under 
stood  that  they  were  prohibited  because  their  com 
pany  was  a  delectable  luxury  reserved  for  older  and 
marriageable  girls  whose  younger  sisters  were  needed 
only  to  help  in  the  household  tasks. 

Rebellion  once  more  reddened  her  heart — rebel 
lion,  as  she  thought,  against  her  own  particular  con 
dition,  but  the  old  rebellion,  actually,  that  burns, 
at  one  time  or  another,  in  every  heart:  the  revolt  of 
the  individual,  more  or  less  conscious  of  its  indi 
viduality,  against  the  conditions  that  are  combined 
to  crush  it.  She  poured  the  water  from  the  heavy 
iron  tea-kettle  into  the  tin  dishpan  with  a  quick 
anger  that  was  not  eased  when  two  or  three  of  the 
scalding  drops  leaped  back  against  her  bared,  round 
arms.  She  flung  the  home-boiled  soap  after  the 
water,  and  she  clattered  the  dishes  as  loudly  as  she 


1 6          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

dared.  Through  the  window — her  soul  hot  with 
the  sense  of  the  injustice  done  her — she  could  sec 
the  happy  lights  in  Etta's  house,  and,  her  hands  deep 
in  the  greasy  fluid,  it  came  to  her  suddenly  that  she 
had  been  a  fool  to  neglect — to  repudiate — to-day 
what  might  have  been  the  golden  chance  to  such  an 
estate  as  her  sister's. 

She  had  heard  the  protesting  Sarah  sent  to  bed; 
had  heard  her  mother  return  to  the  parlor  with  the 
sewing-basket,  and,  finally,  as  she  was  putting  away 
jhe  last  of  the  dishes  in  the  china-closet  in  the 
dining-room,  she  caught  the  voices  of  both  of 
her  parents. 

Dimly  glimpsed  from  the  small  apartment  beyond, 
she  knew  the  scene  well  enough  to  reconstruct  it  per 
fectly.  The  crowded  little  parlor  was  like  a  hundred 
others  in  the  immediate  neighborhood,  a  mathemati 
cal  result  of  the  community  of  which  it  was  a  part. 
There  were  the  two  front  windows  with  the  horse 
hair  chairs  before  each  and,  between  them,  the 
marble-top  table  bearing  the  family  Bible.  There  was 
the  ^ilt  mirror  over  the  gorgeously  lambrequined 
mantelpiece,  which  was  littered  with  a  brass  clock, 
dried-grass-bearing  yellow  vases,  stiff  photographs  of 
dead  or  married  younger  Denbighs,  and  "  memorial 
cards  "  with  illegible  gilt  lettering  upon  a  ground  of 
black.  Close  by  the  cabinet-organ  on  one  side  and 
the  green  sofa  on  the  other — the  sofa  adorned  with 
a  lace  "  tidy  "  that  would  never  remain  neatly  in  its 
place — her  father  and  mother  sat,  separated  by  the 
purple-covered  center-table,  their  gaze  interrupted  by 
the  tall  glass  case  that  contained  the  bunch  of  white 
immortelles  from  the  grave  of  their  eldest  son. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  17 

Mrs.  Denbigh  was  finishing,  it  seemed,  the  narra 
tive  of  the  town's  latest  scandal. 

"  I  never  knowed  Mrs.  Drumbaugh  was  that  soft 
hearted,"  the  mother  was  saying.  "  Nobody  in  town 
was  fooled  over  the  reason  for  why  her  Jennie  went 
away,  an*  yet  here  the  girl  comes  back  a'ready,  and 
Mrs.  Drumbaugh,  church-member  though  she  is, 
takes  her  into  the  house  ag'in — her  an'  her  baby  along 
with  her." 

What  was  it  in  the  words  that  brought  Mary  to 
a  sudden  pause  ?  Her  mother  had  always  been,  like 
most  drudges,  a  gossip,  and  had  sought,  in  repeating 
scandal  about  her  acquaintances,  that  relief  from 
drudgery  which  she  knew  how  to  obtain  only  by  this 
second-hand  thrill  of  evil.  The  girl  had  heard  and 
disregarded  the  telling  of  many  such  a  tale,  and 
yet,  to-night,  she  stood  there  first  listening  in 
uncomprehending  horror  to  the  narrative  and 
then  awaiting  the  inevitable  paternal  comment 
upon  it. 

"  Tuke  'er  bahk,  hey?  "  rumbled  Owen  Denbigh. 
"  Well,  ef  she  bay  sooch  a  fule,  she  deserves  the 
scandal  ov't.  Thank  God  no  youngling  o'  ourn  ever 
went  the  devil's  way.  I  hahve  ahlways  bin  sure  what 
I'd  do  to  'un  ef  she  did,  though." 

He  paused  a  moment,  as  if  to  have  his  wife  inquire 
as  to  the  terrible  punishment  that  he  had  reserved 
for  such  an  error,  and  then,  as  no  inquiry  was  forth 
coming,  he  gave  his  statement  at  any  rate,  with  all 
the  cold  ferocity  of  a  Judge  Jeffries  pronouncing 
sentence. 

"  Bay  'un  thirty  year  old  an'  noot  another  sin 
ag'in  'un,"  he  declared,  "  I  would  beat  'un  within 


1 8  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

a  bare  inch  o'  'er  deeth,  an'  turn  'un  oot  to  live  the 
life  'un  had  picked  fur  herself  I  " 

The  whole  intent  of  that  speech  Mary  was  in 
capable  of  comprehending,  but  she  understood 
enough  to  tremble  and  then  to  fan  to  destructive  fury 
the  fire  of  her  rebellion.  Of  a  sudden,  the  atmos 
phere  of  the  house  had  become  unendurable.  She 
was  gasping  like  a  sparrow  under  a  bell-glass. 

Stealthily  she  crept  into  the  hall.  Carefully  she 
took  her  coat  and  faded  hat  from  the  rack.  Very 
gently  she  opened  the  front  door  and  stole  into  the 
street.  She  felt  dumbly  that  the  world  was  wrong, 
that  youth  should  not  have  to  work,  and  that  to 
seize  the  fruit  of  pleasure  should  not  be  matter  for 
punishment,  but  for  congratulation. 

I  do  not  think  that  she  meant  to  pass  by  the  hotel 
that  evening.  I  do  not  believe  that  most  of  us,  in 
such  moments,  are  actuated  any  more  by  motive  than 
we  are  directed  by  discretion.  Nevertheless,  when 
the  clutch  of  her  emotions  had  enough  loosened  from 
her  throat  to  permit  her  to  take  account  of  her  where 
abouts,  the  time,  and  the  place,  it  was  a  quarter  after 
six  by  the  town-clock;  Mary  was  just  before  the 
plate-glass  window  where  the  drummers  sat,  and, 
only  a  minute  later,  the  stranger  of  the  morning  was 
again  at  her  side. 

"  Von't  you  chust  say  that  you're  not  mad  vith 
me?  "  he  was  asking. 

She  was  so  frightened  that  she  was  conscious  of 
no  other  definite  sensation,  much  less  of  any  ordered 
thought  or  opinion ;  but  she  looked  fairly  at  him,  and 
of  what  she  saw  she  was  immediately  fully  aware. 

He  was  a  young  man,  but  the  sort  of  young  man 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  19 

that  might  be  anywhere  from  nineteen  to  thirty-two, 
because  he  had  the  figure  and  the  face  of  the  former 
age  and  the  eyes  and  the  expression  of  the  latter. 
The  hair  on  his  head  was  black  and  curly;  though 
his  hands  were  not  the  working-hands  with  which 
Mary  was  best  acquainted,  they  were  almost  covered 
with  a  lighter  down  of  the  same  growth ;  and  through 
the  pale  olive  of  his  sorely  clean-shaven  cheeks  shone 
the  blue-black  hint  of  a  wiry  beard  fighting  for  free 
dom.  His  lips  were  thick  when  he  did  not  smile 
and  thin  when  he  did,  with  teeth  very  white;  and 
his  gray  glance  had  a  penetrating  calculation  about 
it  that  made  the  girl  instinctively  draw  her  coat  to 
gether  and  button  it. 

To  his  speech  she  could  pay,  just  then,  scarcely  any 
attention,  except  to  feel  that  its  quick,  thick  quality, 
and  its  ictus  on  the  vowels,  denoted  the  foreigner; 
but  his  clothes  were  a  marvel  that  would  not  be 
denied.  His  coat  and  trousers  of  green  were  cut 
in  the  extreme  of  a  fashion  that  was  new  to  her;  his 
brown  plush  hat  was  turned  far  down  on  one  side 
and  far  up  on  the  other;  his  waistcoat,  of  purple 
striped  by  white,  was  held  by  large  mother-of-pearl 
buttons,  and  his  shoes,  long  and  pointed,  were  the 
color  of  lemons. 

Impulsively  she  had  refused  an  answer  to  his  first 
words;  but  the  young  man  was  a  member  of  the 
persistent  race,  and  speedily  followed  the  first  speech 
with  a  second. 

"  Chust  say  the  vord,"  he  pleaded,  "  und  I  von' 
bother  you  no  more.  I  only  vanted  to  make  myself 
square  vith  you." 

Mary  hesitated.    Something,  she  knew,  she  feared, 


20  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

but  whether  it  was  the  man,  herself,  or  the  habit  of 
obedience  she  could  not  tell.  He  was  polite,  he  was 
respectful;  he  came,  it  was  clear,  from  a  happier 
world  than  her  own — and,  as  against  her  own  she 
was  now  in  open  revolt,  a  certain  parley  with  this 
visitor  from  an  alien  orb  seemed  likely  to  constitute 
a  fitting  declaration  of  independence.  Conditions 
had  worked  upon  her  to  desperation,  and  the  same 
conditions,  little  as  she  guessed  it,  had,  under  the 
mask  of  chance,  inevitably  provided  this  avenue  of 
protest. 

"  Oh,"  she  said,  "  I'm  not  mad  at  you,  if  that's 
what  you  want  to  know." 

"  I'm  glad  of  that,"  he  easily  answered,  as  they 
turned,  quite  naturally,  away  from  the  main  street. 
"  But  I  thought  you  gonsidered  me  fresh." 

"  Well,  I  hadn't  never  been  introduced  to  you, 
you  know." 

The  young  man  laughed. 

"  I'll  introduce  myself !  "  said  he.  "  My  name's 
Max  Grossman — not  my  real  name,  because  I  vas 
born  in  Hungary  an'  nobody  could  say  my  real  name 
ofer  here.  My  fader  is  a  big  distiller  in  New  York 
— he's  vorth  half  a  million  un'  more :  anybody'll  tell 
you  about  him.  'Und  he's  put  me  on  the  road  for 
him." 

This  and  much  more  he  told  her  in  the  following 
minutes.  He  drew  a  truly  brilliant  picture  of  his 
parental  home,  and,  animadverting  now  and  then 
with  scorn  on  the  town  in  which  he  now  found  him 
self,  he  painted  in  the  highest  colors  the  glory  of 
Manhattan. 

New  York,  it  appeared,  was  a  city  of  splendid 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  21 

leisure.  Its  entire  four  millions  of  population  spent 
their  days  in  rest  and  their  nights  in  amusement. 
There  were  the  rumbling  cable-cars,  the  roaring  ele 
vated  trains,  the  subway  expresses,  which  reached  out 
and  drew  the  Battery  within  twenty  minutes  of  the 
Bronx.  There  were  the  realities  that  had  been  only 
vague  magic  names  to  this  girl:  the  East  Side,  the 
Bowery,  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House,  the  Wal 
dorf.  Nobody  went  to  bed  before  three  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  or  woke  before  one  in  the  afternoon. 
Nobody  was  ugly  and  nobody  was  old.  There  were 
no  books  to  study,  no  errands  to  run,  no  dishes  to 
wash.  There  were  only  the  cabs  and  the  taxis  to 
ride  in,  the  hundred  theaters  to  see,  the  cafes  and 
the  music,  Fifth  Avenue  with  its  palaces,  and  Broad 
way,  from  Thirty-fourth  to  Forty-third  "  von  big, 
yellow,  happy  electric  lighd." 

She  listened.  As  he  spoke,  though  she  did  not 
know  it,  the  far-off  orchestras  were  calling  her,  as 
if  the  sound  of  the  city  deafened  her  to  all  other 
sounds,  as  if  the  lights  of  New  York  blinded  her  to 
the  lights  of  home, 

Her  own  story,  as  she  in  turn  briefly  told  it  to 
him,  provided  her  with  the  one  touch  of  contrast 
needed  to  make  the  lure  of  the  new  dream  complete, 
provided  him  with  the  one  text  necessary  for  the 
implications  he  frankly  wanted  her  to  receive.  She 
was  already  so  metropolitan  that,  when  she  agreed 
to  go  to  the  moving-picture  show,  she  passed  the 
portals  of  "  The  Happy  Hour,"  as  the  place  was 
optimistically  entitled,  with  a  superior  scorn  for  all 
that  it  had  to  offer. 

The  narrow  hall  was  dark  when  they  entered — 


22  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Max  pocketing  the  large  roll  of  yellow  bills  from 
which  he  had  drawn  the  price  of  their  admission — 
and,  as  they  sat  down,  half-way  toward  the  stage, 
there  was  being  shown,  on  the  screen,  the  absurd 
adventures  of  a  tramp,  who  entered  an  ornate  hotel 
grill-room  and  who,  among  wondering,  well-dressed 
guests,  was  proceeding  to  order  an  elaborate  meal. 

"  That's  the  //Jtor,"  whispered  Max,  loudly.  "  I'd 
know  id  anyvheres." 

The  pictured  tramp  was,  of  course,  unable  to  pay 
his  score,  and,  equally,  of  course,  was  pursued  as  he 
leaped  through  an  open  window. 

Max  acted  as  Mary's  guide  during  the  tableaux 
of  the  chase  that  followed.  Now  the  quarry  was 
darting  among  the  congested  traffic  of  Times  Square ; 
now  he  had  clambered  over  the  platform  of  a  Forty- 
second  Street  surface-car;  now  he  was  running  up  the 
steep  stairway  of  the  Sixth  Avenue  "  L,"  and  now, 
the  hunters  close  at  his  heels,  he  was  dashing  along 
Thirty-fourth  Street  past  the  Waldorf,  turning  down 
toward  the  Park  Avenue  Hotel,  and  so,  at  last,  was 
caught  at  the  nearby  entrance  to  the  subway. 

When  the  lights  flared  up  at  the  conclusion  of 
the  little  drama,  Mary  sighed  as  if  suddenly  plunged 
from  fairyland  down  to  the  real  world  below.  And 
then  the  sigh  changed  to  a  gasp  of  fright:  in  the 
same  row,  only  six  seats  away,  her  sister  Etta  was 
sitting. 

The  girl  started  to  rise. 

"  Vhat's  wrong?  "  asked  the  astonished  Max. 

"  I  must  go.  Don't  come  out  with  me.  Wait  a 
minute,  and  then  follow.  I'll  be  at  the  next  corner 
up  street.  That's  our  Etta  over  there  1  " 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  23 

But  Max  did  not  seem  fully  to  comprehend  the 
warning.  He  rose  with  Mary,  and  made  some  stir 
in  doing  it,  so  that,  as  the  pair  reached  the  aisle, 
Etta's  eyes  were  drawn  in  the  direction  of  her  sister 
and  the  man. 

Mary,  though  she  hastily  turned  her  head,  thought 
that  she  saw  recognition  in  this  sudden  glance.  She 
thought  that  she  saw  recognition  turn  to  amazement, 
and  amazement  to  rebuke.  Instantly,  there  rose  be 
fore  her  the  reefs  of  ultimate  domestic  disaster. 
With  Max  in  close  attendance,  she  hurried  to  the 
door. 

Outside  she  did  not  speak  until  they  had  reached 
the  comparative  seclusion  of  a  less  frequented  street. 
Then  she  turned  hotly  upon  the  youth,  whom  she 
considered  the  cause  of  her  peril. 

"Why  was  you  such  a  fool?"  she  demanded. 
"  Didn't  you  hear  me  say  for  you  not  to  come  out 
when  I  did?" 

"  I  didn't  understand  you,"  Max  humbly  expostu 
lated.  "  But  vhat  difference  does  it  make,  any- 
vays?  " 

"Difference?  Why,  you  were  so  blamed  noisy 
that  Etta  looked  round  an'  seen  me.  She'll  go 
straight  home  and  tell  pop  I  was  here  with  you." 

"  Veil,"  protested  Max,  "  it's  not  seven  ofclock 
yet,  und  I'm  not  eatin'  you,  vas  I  ?  " 

"  That  don't  matter.    You  don't  know  my  pop !  " 

"Vhat'll  he  do?" 

"  He'll  " — Mary  remembered  previous  punish 
ments  for  smaller  offenses,  and  recalled  the  judgment 
that  she  had  heard  her  father  pronounce  on  a  hypo 
thetical  offender.  "  He'll  beat  me  till  I'm  near 


24          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

dead,"  she  declared;  "  an'  then,  like  as  not,  he'll 
turn  me  out  of  the  house." 

They  were  at  pause  in  the  shadow  of  an  old  but- 
tonwood  tree,  Max  leaning  against  the  gnarled  trunk, 
the  girl  facing  him,  erect. 

Even  as  she  sketched  her  possible  punishment,  the 
possible  became  probable.  She  was  afraid,  and  this 
young  man,  who  had  been  so  deferential,  so  pro 
tecting,  who  had  given  her  so  alluring  a  glimpse  of 
another  world,  seemed  her  only  refuge. 

He  put  out  his  hands  and,  gently,  took  both  of 
hers. 

At  that  touch  the  last  of  her  anger  melted,  almost 
to  tears. 

"  Look  here,"  he  said.  "  I've  been  decent  to  you, 
haven't  I?  I  ain't  tried  to  get  fresh?  " 

She  shook  her  head,  not  trusting  speech. 

"  Veil,  then,  listen  here,"  he  pursued.  "  If  your 
old  man  gets  gay,  chust  remember  that.  You  ain't 
treated  righd  at  home,  the  best  of  times.  You  said 
so  yourself.  Un'  this  here  jay  town's  no  place  for 
a  pretty  young  lady  like  you,  anyvays.  So,  if  there's 
any  trouble,  you  come  for  me,  und  I'll  get  you  avay 
from  here." 

The  girl  thrilled  with  a  delicious  sense  of  adven 
ture.  She  trembled  with  the  foretaste  of  a  new  de 
light.  The  passing  praise  of  her  looks  and  of  her 
newly  acquired  maturity,  a  novel  sound  in  her  ears, 
was  not  lost  upon  her;  but  even  that  was  dwarfed 
by  the  tenor  of  her  companion's  words,  and  the 
wonderful  current  that  ran  from  his  hands  to  hers. 
Was  this  what  had  been  meant,  that  truant  after 
noon,  by  the  calling  birds,  the  leafing  trees  and  the 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  25 

poignant  air  along  the  river?  Was  this  what  young 
women  felt  when  lovers  told  their  love?  She  could 
not  have  formulated  the  questions,  but  her  heart 
asked  them,  and  Max,  meanwhile,  was  repeating: 

"  I'll  get  you  avay  from  here !  " 

"  How — how  could  you  do  it?  "  she  gasped. 

"  It'd  be  dead  easy.  If  there's  any  scrap,  you 
vatch  your  chanc't  un'  give  the  house  the  slip.  I'll 
be  vaitin'  at  the  hotel  till  midnight.  Delephone  me 
from  the  nearest  drugstore,  un'  ve'll  take  a  trolley 
down  the  line  un'  catch  a  train  to  N'York  un'  be 
married  there  this  same  nighd.  I've  a  friend  who's 
a  minister  un'  vill  get  out  of  his  bed  any  hour  I'd 
ask  him." 

He  pressed  her  hands  tighter,  and,  as  he  leaned 
against  the  tree,  drew  her  slightly  toward  him. 

But  Mary,  though  she  did  not  know  why,  still 
fearful,  held  back. 

"  I — we  couldn't  do  that,"  she  said. 

"Vhy  not?"  he  demanded. 

"  Because — why,  we  couldn't  go  away  together, 
alone:  it  wouldn't  be  right." 

Max  straightened  suddenly.  He  released  her 
hands  and  placed  one  tight  arm  about  her  waist. 

"  It  vould  be  righd  if  I  lofed  you,"  he  said.  "  Und 
I  do  lof  you.  Ve  city  folk,  ve  can't  do  things  slow 
like  you  liddle  town  people.  Vhen  I  saw  you  this 
morning,  I  knew  I  liked  you,  because  you  vas  so  differ 
ent  from  all  these  rubes  around  here ;  un'  vhen  I  talk 
vith  you  this  efenin'  I  know  I  lof  you.  Listen  here : 
you  come  avay  with  me  to-nighd.  Ve  vill  go  righd 
ofer  to  N'York,  un'  there  ve  get  married  righd  avay. 
No  more  school,  nor  dishvashin',  nor  scoldin'.  Your 


26  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

own  fader  vill  be  pleased  vhen  it's  ofer,  because  my 
fader  is  reech,  un'  my  fader  vill  be  pleased  too, 
because  he's  been  devilin'  me  to  marry  for  more'n 
a  ye-ar,  only  I  nefer  till  now  found  a  girl  I  lof. 
Come  on,  Mary:  I  lof  you!  " 

Her  eyes  swam  in  a  mist.  They  had  come  then — 
love  and  freedom,  hand  in  hand.  Her  soul  grew 
faint  within  her.  She  struggled  a  little,  fluttering 
like  a  young  bird  in  a  capturing  palm,  but  he  drew 
her  tighter,  and  his  free  hand  passed  electrically 
across  her  cheek. 

"  Come  on  avay !  "  he  urged  softly. 

"  I — I  don't  know  what  to  do !  "  she  panted. 
"  Wait — wait " — it  was  the  ancient  cry  of  woman 
hood  upon  the  brink — "  wait  till  to-morrow!  " 

There  was  a  step  behind  them,  which  Max  was 
the  first  to  hear.  He  freed  her,  and  they  stood  mute 
until  the  shadowy  passer-by  had  gone.  It  was  an 
incident  that  at  least  lessened  the  spell. 

"  Perhaps  it's  all  right,"  said  Mary.  "  Perhaps 
Etta  didn't  see  me,  an'  I  can  tell  'em  I  was  over  at 
my  girl-friend's." 

"  It's  only  puttin'  off  vhat's  got  to  happen  some 
time"  Max  argued.  "  This  town's  no  place  for  a 
girl  like  you." 

He  leaned  toward  her,  but  she  drew,  reluctantly, 
away.  What  might  be  well  by  day  may  well  seem 
ill  by  night. 

"  Wait  till  to-morrow,  anyhow,"  she  urged. — But 
to-morrow,  she  wondered,  how  should  she  explain 
her  afternoon  away  from  school? 

Max  considered. 

"  AH  righd,"  he  at  last  nodded.    "  Go  home  un' 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  27 

think  things  ofer  vith  yourself;  but  I'll  be  chust  as 
ready  to-morrow  as  I  am  to-day.  You've  got  to  get 
avay  from  all  this  ugliness.  Remember  that,  un' 
remember  I  hafn't  been  fresh,  un'  I  vant  righd  now 
to  marry  you.  I  hafn't  efen  tried  to  kiss  you.  Think 
of  that,  un'  think  that  I'll  be  vaitin'  up  at  the  hotel, 
in  case  of  drouble,  till  wz'Jnighd." 

He  wheeled  at  that,  and  left  her. 

Ten  minutes  later — at  a  quarter  to  seven,  so  rap 
idly  had  the  drama  unrolled  itself — she  had  reached 
home  to  find  that  Etta  had  been  there  before  her. 
Denbigh,  on  the  early  morning  shift  that  week,  was 
already  in  bed,  but  her  mother  tossed  the  truant  into 
the  parlor  and  locked  both  doors  while  she  went  up 
stairs  to  waken  him. 

He  came  down  at  once,  in  his  nightshirt,  roaring. 
He  turned  the  key  and  flung  wide  the  door. 

The  room,  however,  was  empty,  and  the  window 
open.  Mary  and  Max  were  already  together,  hurry 
ing  through  the  warm  spring  evening  toward  the 
trolley-car  that  was  to  carry  them  on  the  first  stage 
of  their  journey  to  New  York. 


Ill 

THE  SPECTER  OF  FEAR 

A  sixteen  an  angry  and  frightened  girl  run 
ning  away  from  a  home  where  the  necessity 
for  work  must  cheat  her  youth  of  its  just 
rights — at  sixteen  such  a  girl  cannot  analyze  her 
emotions,  and  Mary's  were  in  sheer  panic.  She  had 
never  before  been  farther  from  her  own  town  than 
the  ten  miles'  distant  county-seat,  had  never  before 
been  at  more  than  verbal  odds  with  her  parents. 
Philadelphia  had  stood  for  the  City  of  Lanterns, 
and  a  quick  retort  for  revolution.  Now  she  was 
bound  for  New  York  and  marriage. 

There  was  none  of  the  few  persons  on  the  trolley- 
car  that  knew  her,  yet  she  kept  her  face  to  the  win 
dow  and  away  from  them.  There  was  no  chance  of 
capture,  yet  she  trembled  whenever  the  brakes 
creaked  and  a  new  passenger  came  aboard.  It  might, 
perhaps,  be  truly  said  that  she  did  not  feel  at  all, 
and  that  the  power  of  poignant  realization  was  still 
paralyzed  by  her  own  action.  It  was  as  if  she  had 
amputated  a  portion  of  her  spiritual  being,  and  was 
still  numb  from  the  shock. 

Whatever  Max's  own  feelings,  he  at  any  rate  con 
ducted  himself  in  the  manner  least  calculated  to  rouse 
his  companion.  He  spoke  only  to  give  the  few  nec 
essary  directions,  and  then  in  a  low  tone,  not  facing 
her,  but  looking  straight  ahead.  He  had  slipped 

as 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  29 

her  the  money  to  pay  her  own  fare  and,  the  better 
to  deceive  whoever  might  follow  them,  had  told  her 
to  buy  a  round-trip  ticket  to  a  point  beyond  that  for 
which  they  were  bound.  With  his  lemon-colored 
shoes  planted  upon  his  suitcase,  he  sat  beside  her, 
but  he  kept  as  wide  a  space  between  them  as  the 
short  seat  would  permit;  and  it  was  only  under  the 
discreet  covering  of  the  light  overcoat  upon  his  knee 
that  he  kept  a  tight  and  reassuring  grasp  of  her  firm 
hand. 

At  a  mile  from  the  county-town  they  left  the  car 
— Mary  first  and  Max  twenty  yards  behind — and 
then,  for  the  competent  young  man  seemed  to  have 
prepared  for  everything,  walked  across  the  fields, 
under  the  stars,  to  a  flag-station  where,  within  a  few 
minutes,  they  could  catch  a  New  York  express.  Arm 
in  arm  they  walked,  but  Max  never  once  frightened 
her  by  a  burst  of  affection,  never  once  did  more  than 
to  encourage  her  by  plain  statements  of  his  loyalty 
and  more  ornate  descriptions  of  the  life  before 
her. 

"  You  vill  like  it,"  he  concluded.  "  I  know  you 
vill  be  happy,  Mary." 

Mary's  breath  caught  a  little  in  her  throat. 

"  Ye — yes,"  she  answered.  "  Only,  I  can't  help 
thinking  some  about  mom." 

"  Sure  you  can't,"  Max  immediately  agreed. 
"  You  mustn't  led  her  vorry  longer  than  you  can 
help  it.  I  tell  you  vhat  ve'll  do.  Ofer  here  in  the 
station,  you  wride  her  a  letter  und  I'll  haf  it  mailed." 

"  Oh,  but  then  pop  would  see  it,  an'  he  might 
follow  us!  " 

"  Don'  gif  no  names  or  say  vhere  ve're  goin', 


30          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

und  how  can  he?  By  the  time  he  gets  it,  ve'll  be 
safe  married,  anyways.  Here  ve  are  at  the  station. 
I've  got  some  paper  un'  pencil  und  an  envellup:  I'll 
tell  you  chust  vhat  to  wride." 

He  did  tell  her,  and  this  note,  given  to  the  train- 
porter,  was  mailed  farther  along  the  line: 

"  Dear  Mother  :  Don't  please  worry  about  me.     I  will  soon  be 
back  for  a  visit,  only  I  have  gone  to  Buffalo  to  get  married.     He  is 
a  nice  young  man  and  his  father  is  rich,  for  I  could  not  stand  to 
have  Pop  beat  me,  nor  do  other  people's  work  any  more. 
' '  Your  aff .  daughter, 

"  MARY  DENBIGH." 

The  train,  which  Max  had  duly  signaled,  had 
stopped  just  as  the  writing  was  ended,  and  the  pair 
of  runaways  had  hurried  into  the  last  seat  of  the 
rear  car. 

During  the  journey  that  followed,  Mary's  nerves, 
accustomed  to  early  hours,  gave  way  not  to  tears, 
but  to  the  exhaustion  consequent  upon  the  strain  of 
her  crowded  day.  Her  hat  in  her  lap,  her  russet 
hair  made  a  pillow  for  her  against  the  sharp  window- 
sill,  and,  with  .Max's  coat  piled  at  the  pane  to  pro 
tect  her  from  the  keen  arrows  of  the  inrushing  night 
air,  she  lay  back,  the  pink  cheeks  and  the  red  mouth 
paler  than  an  hour  since,  and  the  blue  eyes  closed. 
She  did  not  seem  to  sleep,  and  yet  it  was  in  a  dream 
that  the  ride  ended,  in  a  dream  that  she  found  her 
self  one  of  a  hurrying  crowd  stamping  down  the 
platform  and  into  the  huge  elevator  at  the  Jersey 
City  station,  in  a  dream  that  she  clung  faithfully  to 
Max's  arm  as  the  sudden  lights  and  damp  odors 
struck  her  and  as  she  dropped  upon  a  straw-covered 
bench  of  a  swaying  car,  which  shot  them  immedi- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  31 

ately  through  a  tunneled  darkness  into  the  very 
depths  of  the  earth. 

She  knew  from  her  geography  that  New  York  was 
separated  from  New  Jersey  by  water. 

"  When  do  we  cross  the  ferry,  Max?  "  she  asked. 

Max  smiled,  his  thin  lips  showing  his  white  teeth 
in  sharp  contrast  to  his  olive  skin. 

"  We're  crossing  it  now,"  he  answered. 

"  But  where's  the  water?  " 

Max,  mopping  his  dark  forehead  with  a  purple- 
bordered  handkerchief,  pointed  to  the  roof  of  the 
car. 

"  Up  there,"  he  said.  u  Ve're  in  the  tube,  you 
know." 

She  did  not  know,  but  she  was  too  much  ashamed 
of  her  rural  ignorance  further  to  discover  it  by  un- 
considered  questions,  and  so  full  of  a  pulsing  wonder 
at  what  was  to  come  next,  so  full  of  the  expectation 
of  the  child  at  her  first  melodrama  that  she  had 
place  for  no  backward  thought.  She  sat  silent  until 
they  had  come  out  of  the  tunnel,  climbed  a  windy 
stair,  and  emerged  upon  a  thoroughfare  as  much 
ablaze  as  if  all  the  stars  of  heaven  had  descended  to 
light  it,  and  as  brimming  with  moving  life  as  her 
father's  mill  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning. 

Max  regarded  the  girl's  open-eyed  wonder. 

"  Now,"  he  said,  "  ve'll  chust  chump  in  a  taxi 
un'  go  get  a  good  supper,  un'  then,  vhile  the  vaiter's 
filling  our  order,  I'll  first  do  a  little  delephoning." 

He  put  up  his  dark  hand;  a  passing  automobile, 
its  tin  flag  raised,  hummed  up  to  the  curb,  and  Mary, 
clinging  timidly  to  the  arm  of  her  betrothed,  began 
her  first  ride  in  a  taxicab. 


32  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

The  street — it  was  Fourteenth  Street,  he  told  her 
— flared  and  seethed  and  spluttered  before  them.  As 
if  leaning  over  the  head  of  a  runaway  horse,  they  shot 
in  and  out  among  clanging  cable-cars,  dashed  by  snort 
ing  vehicles  of  their  own  sort,  and  nearly  grazed  jost 
ling  cabs  driven  by  cursing  Jehus.  Even  at  that  late 
hour,  some  of  the  shops  were  still  open,  and  the  wide 
pavements  on  eithersidewereblack  with  countermarch 
ing  processions  of  people,  moving  with  the  steady 
rapidity  and  stolidity  of  a  swarm  of  ants.  When 
the  street  ran  by  a  tree-sprinkled  square,  its  houses 
seemed  to  burst  into  still  greater  brightness  to  atone 
for  the  darkness  of  the  park.  Every  second  building 
was  a  restaurant,  a  theater  for  moving-pictures,  or  a 
saloon.  Their  electric-signs  now  winked  from  noth 
ingness  to  light,  now  flashed  forth  a  word,  one  letter 
at  a  time,  and  now  were  surrounded  with  wriggling 
snakes  of  fire. 

It  came  upon  her — this  vision  of  the  absolutely 
new,  of  the  city's  immensity  and  teeming  life — at  a 
moment  when  her  heart  was  ready  for  reaction,  when 
memory  was  prepared  to  reassert  itself,  and  when, 
anger  gone  and  regret  poised  like  a  runner  at  the 
starting-line,  her  quick  determination  might  have 
failed  her.  But  it  came  with  stupefying  force.  The 
dream  of  pleasure  gave  place  for  the  moment  to  a 
certainty  of  dread.  Vaguely,  unreasoningly,  but  with 
the  unquestioning  acceptance  of  a  child,  she  felt  New 
York  as  a  terrible,  solidified  unity;  as  a  vast,  malev 
olent  consciousness ;  as  a  living  prison  that  implacably 
and  resistlessly  raised  itself  on  every  hand  and  on 
every  hand  shut  her  in  forever. 

She  trembled  and  clung  the  tighter  to  her  com- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  33 

panion's  arm,  and  her  companion  was  alert  to  note  her 
agitation. 

"  Vhat's  the  matter?  "  he  inquired,  in  a  voice  that 
he  well  meant  to  be  tender. 

"  I — I  don't  know,"  she  began,  her  red  underlip 
indrawn.  "  I — aren't  we  goin'  pretty  fast?  " 

"  Who?  Us?  Vhy,  I  was  chust  thinking  I'd  tell 
him  to  hit  up  the  pace  a  little.  Are  you  scared?  " 

Her  pride  would  not  permit  confession. 

"  Oh,  no,"  she  lied;  "  I'm  not  scared." 

"  But  you  are  shivering." 

"  I  guess  I'm  kind  of  chilly." 

"  All  righd.  Chust  vait  a  minute  un'  ve'll  soon  be 
at  the  restaurant  un'  varm  up.  You'll  like  that 
restaurant :  it's  von  of  the  swellest  in  town." 

"  But  it's  pretty  late,"  she  ventured.  "  Your 
friend — are  you  sure  he " 

"  Who?  The  minister?  "  Max  patted  her  hand 
with  reassuring  affection.  "  Don't  you  vorry  about 
him.  He's  all  for  me,  und  I'll  get  him  out  of  bed 
chust  as  soon  as  ve've  ordered  our  supper." 

A  few  blocks  more,  and  Max,  aided  by  a  marvel- 
ously  tall  person  in  a  wonderful  uniform,  was  help 
ing  her,  with  what  she  considered  an  elaborate  court- 
tesy,  to  dismount  from  the  taxi,  pass  under  a  glass 
awning  and,  through  a  changing  stream  of  hurrying 
waiters  and  arriving  and  departing  guests  terribly 
arrayed,  to  climb  a  softly  carpeted  stair  and  enter 
a  brilliant  balcony  open  to  the  street  and  full  of 
chattering  men  and  women  eating  and  drinking  at 
a  score  of  tables.  Even  in  her  fright,  it  was  with 
a  touch  of  admiration  that  she  observed  how  Max — 
her  Max — seemed  to  be  known  to  the  immediately 


34          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

attentive  waiters,  and  how,  smiling,  they  hurried  to 
make  way  for  him. 

They  secured  a  corner  table,  a  relatively  quiet 
corner  table,  and  there,  with  a  servant  standing  by, 
pencil  in  hand,  and  with  a  huge  double-paged  menu- 
card  before  each  of  them,  made  ready  for  their 
meal. 

"  Chust  you  order  vhatever  you  like,"  said  Max. 
"  Pretty  near  efferything  in  the  vorld's  on  there,  but 
if  you  vant  anything  that  you  can't  see,  chust  you 
ask  for  it." 

Mary  looked  at  the  card.  In  spite  of  all  that  had 
passed,  and  all  that  now  filled  her  heart,  she  was 
young,  and  youth  is  so  fortunate  as  to  be  able  to 
eat  in  the  trough  of  any  emotional  sea.  She  was  a 
child,  and,  by  the  sure  logic  of  childhood,  who 
so  thought  to  feed  her  could  be  nothing  but  a 
friend. 

The  card,  however,  was  of  small  assistance.  Its 
very  size  was  appalling,  and  its  offerings  were  made 
in  an  unfamiliar  tongue. 

"  You  get  what  you  like,"  she  at  last  submitted. 
"  I'm  so  hungry  I  can  eat  anything." 

He  saw  her  difficulty  so  well  that  he  could  rescue 
her  from  it  without  seeming  to  see  it  at  all. 

"  Veil,  I'm  vith  you  there,"  he  said  cheerfully, 
and  proceeded  to  obey  her,  rattling  off  a  list  of 
dishes  of  no  one  of  which  she  had  ever  heard  before. 
"  Un'  have  the  Martinis  dry,"  he  cautioned  in  con 
clusion,  "  vith  a  dash  of  absinthe  in  them — un'  bring 
them  righd  avay:  I'm  spittin'  gotten." 

The  waiter  left,  and,  as  he  did  so,  Max  again 
addressed  the  girl. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  35 

"  Excuse  me  for  von  minute,"  he  said. 

But  Mary's  blue  eyes  opened  wide  in  instant  alarm, 
and  she  put  a  detaining  hand  upon'  his  wrist. 

"  Don't!  "  she  quavered.  "  Don't  go  away!  I — 
I  don't  want  to  be  left  alone." 

Max  laughed  outright. 

"  Haf  you  forgot  our  minister?"  he  demanded. 
"  Ve  don't  vant  to  go  to  his  house  vithout  first 
giffin'  him  a  chanc't  to  get  some  clothes  on.  Efen  up 
your  vay,  the  ministers  vear  a  suit  under  their  nighd- 
gowns  vhen  they  marry  people." 

She  smiled  faintly  at  his  labored  wit,  and,  as  her 
heart  fluttered  at  this  definite  approach  to  the  end 
of  her  journey,  permitted  him  to  go. 

Had  he  been  absent  for  only  the  minute  that  he 
had  promised,  the  time  would  have  seemed  long  to 
the  waiting  girl,  but  he  remained  invisible  for  much 
longer,  and  to  Mary,  watching  the  laughing,  uncar 
ing  strangers  from  another  life,  the  terror  of  the 
city  in  her  soul  and  the  sense  of  all  that  she  had 
done  lurking  in  the  shadows  of  her  brain,  the  quar 
ter  of  an  hour  appeared  to  be  four  times  that  period. 
Once  she  feared  that  he  had  met  with  some  accident; 
once  she  was  saved  from  starting  in  search  of  him 
only  by  the  knowledge  that,  in  so  doing,  she  must 
infallibly  lose  herself.  She  would  have  made  in 
quiries  of  a  waiter,  but  the  waiters  were  too  impos 
ing.  She  would  have  cried,  but  she  was  afraid  to 
cry.  She  would  have  ended,  perhaps,  by  some  utter 
betrayal  of  all  that  was  battling  within  her;  but, 
just  when  she  was  sure,  for  the  thousandth  time, 
that  she  could  endure  no  more,  she  saw  Max  corning 
toward  her  from  the  long-watched  door. 


36  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

As  soon  as  she  noticed  his  strangely  stern  face, 
the  old  fear  gave  place  to  a  fresh  one. 

"What's  happened?"  she  asked. 

He  pulled  back  his  chair  spitefully  and  flung  him 
self  into  it. 

"  These  crazy  laws  of  your  America,"  he  snarled, 
"  there  ain't  no  sense  in  them !  " 

"What's  the  matter?"  she  repeated. 

"  Vhy,  it's  this  way.  Of  course,  it  don'  make  no 
difference;  it  only  puts  things  off  till  wornin';  but 
it's  this  vay :  I  got  my  minister  friend  on  the  'phone, 
un'  he's  all  ready  to  marry  us,  only  he  says  the  law 
says  ve  must  haf  a  license  from  City  Hall  first,  un' 
if  ve  don't  get  von,  he  can  go  to  chail  because  of 
marryin'  us  vithout  it." 

"  Well,"  said  Mary,  "  let's  get  a  license." 

Max  spread  forward  the  palms  of  his  dark  hands. 

"  How  can  ve?  "  he  demanded.  "  The  City  Hall 
closes  in  the  afternoon  un'  don't  open  till  mornin'." 

Here,  apparently,  was  tragedy.  Specific  reasons 
for  its  tragic  elements  the  girl  would,  perhaps,  have 
found  it  hard  to  give,  but  that  it  was  tragic  she  knew 
instinctively.  Her  blue  eyes  opened  wide  in  fright. 

"What  are  we  to  do?"  she  pleaded. 

But  Max,  the  resourceful,  had  been,  it  appeared, 
only  temporarily  checkmated. 

"  I  thought  of  that,"  he  said.  "  Ve  can't  get 
married  now  till  to-morrow;  but  my  modder  has  a 
good  friend  un'  I  delephone  her.  She  told  me  she'd 
be  glad  to  have  you  her  guest  ofer  to-nighd.  I'll  take 
you  there  in  a  taxi,  un'  go  home  for  my  own  sleep. 
I'd  take  you  vith  me,  but  it  vouldn't  do  to  spring 
a  new  vife  on  the  family  vithout  varnin'.  Then  I'll 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  37 

have  talked  vlth  my  own  people,  und  I'll  bring  them 
around  to  the  veddin',  first  thing  in  the  mornin'." 

Mary,  however,  quailed. 

"  I  don't  want  to  do  that,"  she  inconsequently  re 
sponded.  "  I  don't  want  to  go  to  strange  people's 
alone." 

"  Oh,  don't  you  vorry,  now,"  Max  soothed  her. 
"  I'll  go  vith  you  for  a  liddle  vhile  un'  see  that  you 
make  yourself  at  home.  This  friend  of  my  modder's 
is  a  fine  voman,  un'  she's  rich.  She  is  Mrs.  Legere. 
She  lives  in  a  fine  house:  you'll  like  her." 

He  persisted  in  his  persuasions,  and,  in  the  end, 
he  won  her  acquiescence.  After  all,  here  were  the 
walls  of  the  city  about  her,  and  she  had  no  choice. 

While  they  had  been  talking,  the  waiter  had  re 
turned  and  had  placed  before  each  of  them  one  of 
the  stemmed  glasses  full  of  the  pale  yellow  concoc 
tion  that  Max  had  ordered. 

"  Veil,"  grinned  the  host,  "  here's  happy  returns 
of  the  day  un'  many  of  them." 

He  took  his  glass  in  his  hairy  hand  and  flung  the 
contents  down  his  throat. 

But  Mary  looked  at  the  drink  in  growing  alarm. 

"  Isn't  it  whiskey?  "  she  asked. 

"No-o-o!  I  don't  drink  vhiskey.  This  is  only 
vermout'  un'  tchin." 

"  Gin's  just  the  same  as  whiskey,"  the  girl  pro 
tested. 

"  Not  by  a  long  sighd  it  ain't." 

"  It's  liquor,  anyhow." 

"  Sure,  it's  liquor;  but  drink  a  liddle  of  it;  it  vill 
gif  you  an  appetite." 

Mary  shook  her  russet  head. 


38  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I  don't  need  no  appetite,"  she  said;  "  I'm  half 
starved  as  it  is." 

"  You'll  need  something  to  grind  up  these  here 
Hungarian  things,  though." 

"  No,"  said  Mary;  "  I'd  rather  not." 

"  But  efferybody  does  here  in  New  York." 

"  Then  I  guess  I'll  wait  till  I'm  a  regular  New 
Yorker." 

"  Don't  your  fader  drink?" 

"  Sometimes  he  does,"  said  the  girl,  conclusively; 
"  an'  that's  why  I  don't." 

He  urged  her  no  further;  he  even  denied  himself  a 
glass  of  the  wine  that  he  had  ordered,  and  he  suc 
ceeded,  by  this  abstinence,  in  regaining  whatever  he 
had  lost  of  her  faith  in  him.  He  ate  heartily  him 
self,  and  if  his  manner  of  eating  was  not  precisely 
that  most  common  in  restaurants  of  a  more  careful 
sort,  this  was  something  that  the  girl  would  have 
failed  to  note  even  had  she  not  been  so  busily  en 
gaged  by  wonder  at  the  service  and  consumption  of 
the  novel  food.  It  was  not  until,  contentedly  sighing, 
she  had  sunk  back  from  the  wreck  of  her  second  ice, 
that  she  remembered  again  the  lateness  of  the  hour. 

With  a  display  of  his  large  bills  and  another  flurry 
of  attendants,  they  left  the  restaurant,  walking 
among  the  gayly  dressed  and  loudly  laughing  people 
at  the  tables,  passing  down  the  heavily  carpeted 
stairs,  and  entering  another  pulsing  motor-car.  Max 
leaned  out  of  the  door  and  gave  an  address  that 
Mary  did  not  hear;  the  chauffeur  threw  forward  the 
metal  clutch,  and  the  automobile  shot  ahead  on  its 
journey. 

They  went  for  some  time  under  the  still  hammer- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  39 

ing  elevated;  then  turned  through  a  quieter  and 
darker  street;  threaded  rapidly,  twisting  hither  and 
yon,  a  dozen  other  highways  and  byways  and  at 
length  drew  up  at  their  destination.  Max  leaped 
lightly  to  the  pavement  and  tossed  the  driver  a 
bill. 

"  Neffer  mind  the  change,"  he  said,  and  had 
scarcely  helped  Mary  to  dismount  before  the  car  had 
snorted  away  into  the  night,  leaving  the  pair  of 
young  lovers  in  the  scarcely  broken  darkness  and  in 
a  silence  that  seemed  surrounded  by  a  dim,  distant 
rumble  of  city-sound. 

The  girl  could  see  little  of  her  whereabouts.  She 
observed  only  that  she  was  in  a  slumbering  block 
of  blinded  dwelling-houses,  a  scene  different  from  any 
that  New  York  had  thus  far  presented  to  her.  One 
distant,  sputtering  arc-light  succeeded  only  in  accentu 
ating  the  gloom ;  underfoot  the  way  resounded  to  the 
slightest  tread;  from  the  little  patch  of  inky  sky  into 
which  the  roofs  blended  above,  a  bare  handful  of 
anaemic  stars  twinkled  drowsily,  and,  on  both  sides, 
from  corner  to  corner,  the  uniform,  narrow  houses 
rose  in  somber  repetition,  each  with  its  brief,  abrupt 
flight  of  steps,  each  with  its  blank  windows,  each 
seemingly  asleep  behind  its  mask. 

More  than  this,  indeed,  Mary's  tired  eyes  could 
have  had  no  time  to  observe,  for  Max's  strong  fingers 
were  at  once  curled  under  her  armpit,  and  she  was 
hurried  up  to  one  of  the  innumerable  mute  doorways. 
He  pressed  a  button  hidden  somewhere  in  the  wall, 
and,  almost  immediately,  the  door  swung  open. 

The  pair  looked  from  darkness  upon  a  rosy  twi 
light.  Under  the  feeble  rays  of  the  pink-shadowed 


40          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

stairway,  there  were  just  visible  the  outlines  of  a 
full-blown  form. 

"  Hello,  Rosie !  "  cried  Max  as,  quickly  snapping 
the  door  behind  him,  he  passed  by  his  charge  and 
seized  an  invisible  hand.  "  You  vaited  up  for  us 
un'  come  to  the  door  yourself!  That  vas  good  of 
you." 

In  spite  of  her  Gallic  cognomen,  Mrs.  Rose 
Legere  replied  in  the  tone  and  vernacular  of  Man 
hattan  Island. 

"  Sure  I  waited  for  you,"  she  answered.  "  But 
don't  talk  so  loud:  you'll  wake  the  whole  family. — 
And  is  this  the  little  lady,  eh?  " 

Half  disposed  to  resist,  Mary  felt  herself  gently 
propelled  forward  by  Max,  and  then  enveloped  in 
an  ample,  strangely  perfumed  embrace,  while  two 
full  warm  lips  printed  a  kiss  upon  her  cool  young 
cheek. 

"  Come  into  the  back  parlor,"  said  Rose  Legere, 
lightly  seizing  the  girl's  hand.  "  I  want  to  get  a 
look  at  the  bride." 

She  led  the  way  past  the  closed  double  doors  of  the 
front  room  on  the  ground  floor,  and  into  a  rear 
apartment  that,  though  not  brilliantly  illuminated, 
was  far  better  lighted  than  the  hall. 

It  was  a  room  the  like  of  which  Mary  had  never 
seen,  decorated  in  colors  that  outshone  the  rainbow 
and  filled  to  overflowing  with  furniture  that,  to  the 
undiscriminating  eyes  of  the  girl,  gave  it  the  air  of 
a  chamber  in  the  Cave  of  Monte  Cristo.  Gilt- 
framed  pictures  of  beautiful  men  and  women — she 
supposed  they  must  be  Grecian  men  and  women — 
flamed,  in  more  than  lifelike  hues,  from  the  crimson 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  41 

walls.  The  tall  lamp  on  the  blue-clothed  table  was 
shaded  in  red;  the  thick  rug  flowered  gorgeously; 
the  deep  chairs  were  upholstered  in  pale  brown,  and 
the  lazy  sofa  on  which,  as  Max  closed  the  inner  door 
upon  their  entrance,  Mrs.  Legere  seated  herself  with 
her  guest,  was  stuffed  with  soft  pillows  of  bewilder 
ing  radiance. 

Nor,  when  Mary  came  to  look  at  her,  did  the 
hostess  seem  out  of  keeping  with  her  surroundings. 
To  the  girl's  home  Owen  Denbigh  had  once  brought 
a  large,  lithographed  calendar,  issued  by  a  brewery, 
and  depicting,  at  its  top,  a  woman  of  the  elder  Teu 
tonic  days,  very  red  and  white,  with  long  yellow 
hair,  and  a  body  of  rounded  proportions,  which 
threatened  to  grind  to  powder  the  rock  on  which  she 
sat,  and  desperately  endangered  the  filmy  garments 
that  enfolded  without  clothing  her.  It  was  of  this 
picture  that  Mary  instantly  thought  when  she  got 
her  first  full  view  of  Mrs.  Legere. 

The  hostess  was  clad  in  a  long,  fluttering,  baby- 
blue  kimona,  spotted  by  embroidered  white  dragons, 
with  sleeves  that  fell  despairingly  from  her  puckered 
elbows,  disclosing  thick  white  arms  with  rolls  of  fat 
at  the  wrists,  and  plump  hands  and  fingers  the 
almond  shaped  nails  of  which  gleamed  like  the  points 
of  daggers.  The  folds  of  light  silk,  held  by  a  large 
amethyst  pin  at  the  base  of  her  sturdy  throat,  bulged 
broadly  over  her  capacious  breasts  and  trailed,  across 
frou-frouing  lace,  far  beyond  her  heels. 

All  this  Mary  saw  first,  and  then,  looking  upward 
across  the  figure  that,  literally,  overshadowed  her, 
she  saw  a  large,  round,  good-enough-natured  face, 
surmounting  a  white  double  chin.  The  corn-colored 


42  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

hair  was  massed  in  an  intricate  maze  of  puffs  and 
coils  and  braids,  which  made  the  girl  wonder  how 
much  was  its  owner's  natural  growth  and  how  much 
was  due  to  the  artifices  that  Mary  had  always  longed 
for  and  had  always  been  denied.  The  forehead  was 
low  and  calm ;  the  violet  eyes  of  a  more  than  natural 
brightness,  with  crowsfeet  beside  them  and  pouches 
below,  only  just  discernible  in  lamplight.  The  brows 
and  lashes  were  of  a  blackness  that  contrasted  with 
the  coiffure;  the  skin,  here  like  snow  and  there  as 
red  as  roses,  and  the  full,  easy-going  mouth  as  crim 
son  as  a  wound.  Mary  thought  that  here  at  last 
was  a  beautiful  woman. 

"  I  sure  am  glad  to  see  you,"  purred  Mrs.  Legere, 
as,  having  divested  the  guest  of  hat  and  coat,  she 
whisked  these  into  the  hall  and,  returning,  again 
seated  herself  and  fondled  the  visitor's  passive,  but 
flattered,  hand  between  her  own  extensive,  well-cared- 
for  palms.  "  Max  raved  about  you  over  the  tele 
phone — just  raved — and,  now  that  I  get  to  a  clinch 
with  you,  I  begin  to  think  that  he  knew  what  he 
was  talking  about." 

Max  was  seating  himself  on  an  orange-colored 
ottoman  opposite  them.  He  grinned  broadly,  his 
narrowed  lips  showing  his  even,  sparkling  teeth. 

"  Sure  I  knew  vhat  I  vas  talkin'  about,"  he  de 
clared. 

Mary  was  not  used  to  compliments,  but  she  was 
too  honest  not  to  show  that  she  liked  them.  She 
blushed,  and  was  all  the  prettier  for  it;  but  she  did 
manage  to  deprecate  the  sentiments  of  the  better 
known  of  her  critics. 

"  Mr.  Grossman  is  crazy,"  she  modestly  observed. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  43 

"About  you  he  is,"  said  Mrs.  Legere;  "and," 
she  added,  "  I  don't  blame  him. — But  look  here  " — 
she  placed  a  crooked  forefinger  under  the  girl's  chin 
and  turned  the  blushing  face  upward — "  look  here, 
what  a  tired  little  woman  it  is! — Max,  you're  so 
careless,  I'll  bet  you've  never  thought  to  give  this 
poor  child  a  drop  of  wine  to  strengthen  her  after 
all  that  traveling !  " 

"  I  tried  to  get  her  to,"  said  Max,  "  but  she 
vouldn't  take  it." 

"What?" 

"  I  don't  drink,"  explained  Mary. 

"  Of  course  you  don't,  but,"  Mrs.  Legere  eluci 
dated,  "  taking  a  glass  or  two  of  wine  after  a  rail 
road  ride  isn't  drinking." 

"  No-o,"  Mary  granted;  "  but  I  don't  care  for  it." 

"  I  hope  not — only  taken  this  way  it's  medicine. 
I  don't  blame  you  for  not  drinking  in  a  restaurant 
with  a  bad  boy  like  Max;  but  you  need  it  now;  you're 
all  played  out.  This  is  as  good  as  your  home  till 
to-morrow,  you  know.  Just  have  a  little  with  me; 
I'm  old  enough  to  be  your  mother,  and  we  won't  give 
Max  a  drop — just  to  punish  him. — Cassie !  " 

She  had  run  through  the  speech  with  a  rapidity 
that  had  left  the  girl  no  chance  for  reply,  and  now, 
before  Mary  could  move  her  lips,  she  had,  with 
amazing  agility,  leaped  to  a  back  door,  opened  it, 
called  an  order  into  the  darkness  beyond,  and  as 
quickly  returned  to  her  former  position  on  the  sofa. 

"  It  will  be  the  best  thing  in  the  world  for  you," 
she  said.  "  The  doctor  orders  it  for  me,  and  so  I 
always  have  it  ready  on  ice." 

As   she   concluded   speaking,    the    door   through 


44          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

which  she  had  called  was  reopened  and  there  entered 
a  tall,  raw-boned,  glum,  colored  girl,  whose  shining 
ebony  skin  was  darkened  by  the  white  apron  that  she 
wore.  She  bore  a  tray  on  which  was  a  gilt-topped 
bottle  and  two  narrow  glasses. 

"  Put  it  there,  Cassie,"  said  Mrs.  Legere,  point 
ing  to  the  table. 

The  girl  obeyed  and  left  the  room.  Max  seized 
the  bottle,  ripped  off  the  gilding  and,  wrapping  his 
purple-bordered  handkerchief  about  the  neck,  with 
one  dexterous  twist,  drew  out  the  resounding  cork. 

A  living  foam  gushed  from  the  neck  as  the  self- 
appointed  butler  poured  into  the  two  glasses  a  pale 
gold  fluid,  which  creamed  angrily  to  their  edges, 
and  then  subsided  until  first  one  addition  and  then 
another  set  them  boiling  again. 

Mrs.  Legere  took  a  glass  in  each  hand  and  pressed 
the  foremost  into  the  passive  palm  of  the  girl. 

"  Well,"  said  she,  in  a  phrase  new  to  Mary, 
"  here  we  are." 

Mary  hesitated,  the  glass  to  her  lips.  She  could 
hear  the  liquid  whispering  to  her,  and  particles 
seemed  to  jump  from  it  and  sting  her  eyes. 

"  What  is  it?  "  she  asked. 

"  Vine,"  said  Max. 

"  But  what  kind  of  wine?  "  she  weakly  delayed. 

"  My  dear,"  her  entertainer  informed  her,  "  there 
is  only  one  kind  of  wine  in  New  York." 

"  It's  tchampagne,"  hissed  Max,  as  if  the  name 
were  something  too  sacred  to  be  spoken  in  the  tone 
of  ordinary  conversation.  "  Un'  this  kind  costs 
eighd  dollars  a  bottle." 

The  words  and  the  connotation  had  their  lure. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  45 

Champagne — she  had  heard  of  it  as  the  beverage 
of  the  rich;  and  eight  dollars  for  one  bottle — the 
price  of  two  winter  dresses ! 

u  Come  on,"  smiled  Mrs.  Legere. 

The  girl  still  hesitated. 

"  Here's  to  the  wedding!  "  prompted  the  hostess, 
and  drank  the  entire  contents  of  her  glass. 

Mary  took  a  mouthful  and  swallowed  it.  At 
first  she  nearly  choked.  Then  the  fiery  liquid  brought 
fresh  tears  to  her  blue  eyes,  still  smarting  from  the 
gas  that  had,  a  moment  before,  assailed  them.  But 
finally,  there  began  to  spread  through  her  weary 
body  a  grateful  glow,  and,  half  in  apology  for  what 
she  feared  had  been  a  clownish  exhibition,  she  looked 
up  with  red  lips  pleasantly  parted. 

"Now,  wasn't  I  right?"  inquired  Mrs.  Legere. 
"  Don't  you  feel  better  already?" 

**  I — I  believe  I  do,  thank  you,"  Mary  admitted. 
"  Anyhow,  it  is  pretty  good,  I  guess — when  you  get 
used  to  it." 

She  took,  bravely  and  with  an  ease  now  gained 
by  experience,  a  second  drink,  and,  as  she  held  the 
glass  before  her,  Max  gallantly  replenished  it. 

A  bell  rang  and  the  glum,  ebony  maid  passed 
through  the  room,  closing  both  doors  behind  her. 

Mary,  alarmed  at  this  nocturnal  interruption, 
started  a  little,  but  neither  of  her  companions  seemed 
to  regard  the  incident  as  unusual. 

'  You  look  much  better,"  Mrs.  Legere  assev 
erated.  "  Finish  that  glass,  dearie,  and  you'll  be 
all  to  the  good  again." 

"  Do  you  think  I'd  better  take  so  much?  " 

Both  Max  and  Mrs.  Legere  laughed  unaffectedly. 


46          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Vhy,  there  ain't  enough  here  to  hurt  a  baby," 
declared  the  former. 

Mary  accepted  the  assurance.  She  did  not  like 
the  taste  of  the  champagne,  but  she  knew  now  that 
she  had  been  very  tired,  and  the  wine  sent  fresh  life 
and  energy  through  her  sleepy  limbs.  She  emptied 
the  glass  and  felt,  joyfully,  all  her  fears  and  regrets 
slipping  for  her.  Doubt  and  difficulty  were  resolved 
into  a  shimmering  mist,  were  overcome,  were  for 
gotten. 

The  black  maid  thrust  her  head  in  at  the  hall- 
doorway. 

Mrs.  Legere  rose. 

"  Excuse  me,"  she  said,  leaving  the  room.  "  I'll 
be  right  back." 

Max,  the  instant  she  was  gone,  rose  in  his  turn. 

"  I'm  going  to  fool  her,"  he  said.  "  I'm  going 
to  graft  her  drink!  " 

He  took  the  glass  that  his  hostess  had  placed  upon 
the  table,  poured  more  of  the  wine  into  it,  replenished 
the  glass  of  his  now  unresisting  companion  and  sat 
down  by  her  side,  his  arm  stretched  behind  her. 

Mary,  with  refreshed  courage,  broke  the  silence. 
She  was  feeling  like  a  naughty  child  triumphantly 
successful  in  her  naughtiness. 

"  Do  you  know,  Max,"  she  said,  "  I  gave  a  jump 
when  that  bell  rang?  I  thought  for  a  minute  they 
might  be  after  us." 

"  Nix  on  that,"  chuckled  Max.  "  They  couldn't 
catch  us  if  they  tried.  Here's  to  the  runavaysl  " 

They  clinked  glasses  and  drank. 

"  I  guess,"  the  young  man  pursued,  "  it  was  chust 
von  of  Rosie's  boarders." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  47 

"  Her  boarders  ?  Does  she  run  a  boarding- 
house?  "  There  was  a  note  of  dignified  scorn  in 
Mary's  climbing  voice. 

"  Sure  she  keeps  boarders." 

"  But  I "     Mary  hesitated.     She  was  tasting 

wine  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  she  had  been  tired 
and  nerve-wracked,  and  now,  though  thoughts 
danced  through  her  mind  with  unfamiliar  rapidity, 
utterance  seemed  to  her  suddenly,  and  somewhat 
amusingly,  to  have  become  too  clumsy  to  keep  pace 
with  them.  "  I  thought,"  she  elaborately  persisted, 
"  that — you — said — she — was  rich." 

"  She  is,"  said  Max;  "  only  she's  got  a  big  house 
she  can't  all  use  herself.  Lots  of  people  fill  their 
houses  that  vay  in  N'York." 

Mary  started  to  formulate  a  reply  that  came 
glistening  along  the  dim  horizon  of  her  mind;  but 
just  then  there  was  a  light  tap  at  the  door. 

"Come  in!"  called  Max,  and  Mrs.  Legere  re- 
entered. 

The  precaution  of  her  hostess  forced  a  smile  from 
Mary. 

"Why  did  you  knock?"  she  asked. 

But  Mrs.  Legere  shook  her  corn-colored  locks 
wisely. 

"  I  don't  ever  disturb  lovers,"  she  said. 

She  sat  down  opposite  the  pair  she  was  addressing 
and,  without  noticing  that  Max  had  appropriated 
her  glass,  discovered  a  fresh  one  on  the  mantelpiece, 
poured  herself  a  mouthful  of  the  wine  and  then  de 
canted  the  rest  for  Mary. 

She  had  just  put  down  the  empty  bottle  when  the 
bell  rang  a  second  time. 


48  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"Good  Lord,"  she  sighed,  "there  it  goes  again! 
These  people  will  be  the  death  of  me,  losing  their 
keys  and  coming  in  at  all  hours.  Never  mind,  Cas- 
sie,"  she  called  through  the  rear  door,  "  I'll  go  my 
self!  "  And  then,  to  Mary,  she  concluded:  "I'll 
attend  to  this  and  then  I'll  come  right  back  and  send 
Max  home  and  show  you  to  your  room." 

She  left  them  seated  on  the  sofa,  Max's  dark  hand 
encircling  the  soft,  young  fingers  of  the  girl  as  gently 
as  if  he  had  been  a  rustic  wooer. 

"  Shall  I  go  graft  another  bottle  from  the 
kitchen  ?  "  he  asked,  grinning  impishly. 

Mary  shook  her  russet  head. 

"  Not  for  me,"  she  said;  "  I  guess  I've  had 
enough." 

Max  again  refrained  from  insistence.  Instead,  he 
remained  beside  her,  and  fell  once  more  into  the  story 
that  she  had  learned  best  to  like, — the  beautiful  pic 
tures  of  the  wonderful  city,  of  the  work-free  life 
that  she  should  lead  there,  and  of  their  marriage  on 
the  fast  approaching  morning. 

Gradually,  as  his  voice  ran  smoothly  on,  the  words 
he  was  then  saying  became  confused  in  her  brain  with 
other  words  that  he  had  said  earlier  in  the  evening. 
Her  eyelids  grew  heavy.  The  mood  of  exhilaration 
passed,  and  a  weariness  far  more  compelling  than 
that  from  which  she  had  previously  suffered  stole 
upon  her.  Mrs.  Legere  was  absent  for  an  uncon 
scionable  time.  The  girl  yawned. 

"  I  wonder  when  she's  comin'  back,"  said  Mary. 
"  I'm— I'm  awful  tired." 

Max's  hand  slipped  to  her  unresisting  head  and 
pressed  it  down  upon  his  shoulder.  He  had  not  yet 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  49 

so  much  as  kissed  her,  and  he  did  not  kiss  her 
now. 

"  Don't  vorry  about  her,"  he  said  softly.  "  You're 
tired  out.  Chust  close  your  eyes  for  a  minute,  Mary, 
un'  I'll  vake  you  vhen  she  comes." 

His  shoulder  was  very  comfortable.  She  closed 
her  blue  eyes. 

"  You  will  wake  me?  "  she  murmured. 

"  Sure  I  vill,"  said  Max.  "  I'll  have  you  clean 
avake  before  she's  through  knockin'." 

But  he  must  have  forgotten  that  promise,  for  when 
Mrs.  Legere  at  last  returned,  he  was  still  sitting 
there  among  the  pillows,  Mary's  hair  fallen  over  his 
green  coat,  her  cheeks  pinker  than  ever,  and  her  girl 
ish  breast  rising  and  falling  rhythmically  in  sleep. 


IV 

AWAKENING 

CLINGING   to   a    gigantic   pendulum,    Mary 
was  swept  through  a  mighty  curve  of  roaring 
darkness,  up   from  the  black  chasm  of  in 
sensibility,  and  tossed,  swaying  over  that  frightful 
cliff,  to  the  precipitous  crag  of  consciousness.     For 
what  seemed  many  minutes,  she  tottered  on  the  verge, 
dizzy,  afraid.    Then  white  knives,  swift  and  sharp, 
slashed  at  her  eyes  and  forced  up  the  lids. 

Defying  closed  blinds  and  drawn  chintz  curtains, 
the  sunlight  of  noonday  beat  upon  her  face.  She 
pulled  something  between  her  cheek  and  the  leaping 
rays.  Her  hand  trembled. 

At  first  she  could  neither  think  nor  recollect.  The 
blows  of  an  ax,  regular,  tremendous,  were  splitting 
her  head.  Her  throat  was  hot  and  dry  and  choking. 
Her  stomach  crawled  and  leaped  with  nausea.  From 
head  to  foot  she  was  shaking  with  recurrent  nervous 
chills  that  wracked  a  body  of  which  every  muscle  was 
strained  and  sore. 

Realization  of  the  present  came  slowly,  but  it 
preceded  all  memory  of  the  past.  She  found  that 
the  thing  with  which  she  had  instinctively  shaded  her 
eyes  was  a  sheet,  and,  as  she  lowered  it,  she  saw, 
in  a  glance  where  the  employment  of  sight  was  a 
separate  pain,  that  she  was  lying  among  large  pillows 
in  a  big  brass  bed,  heavily  mattressed.  Beyond  the 

50 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  51 

foot  of  the  bed  her  survey  could  not  extend,  because 
the  foot  was  high  and  hung  with  a  pink  and  green 
down  quilt;  but  between  two  windows  against  the 
wall  to  her  right,  she  saw  a  bureau,  bearing  a  few 
scant  toilet  articles,  and  opposite,  on  the  left,  there 
was  a  washstand  with  a  basin  on  the  floor  before  it 
and,  on  its  top,  a  pitcher,,  a  soap-tray,  a  small  brown 
bottle,  and  a  little  blue  box  bursting  with  white 
cotton. 

This  was  not  the  room  in  which  she  had  first  fallen 
asleep. 

With  that  isolated  fact  flashing  like  a  message  of 
disaster  through  her  brain,  she  sat  suddenly  upright 
in  the  bed;  but  the  room  pitched  before  her  like  a 
boat  in  the  trough  of  a  storm  on  the  river  at  home. 
A  wave  of  sickness  hissed  over  her,  and  she  sank 
back  among  pillows  repellantly  scented. 

Vaguely  she  realized  that  she  must  be  in  a  room 
somewhere  above  the  ground  floor.  Dimly  she  be 
gan  to  wonder  how  she  had  got  up  the  stairs.  What 
would  the  kindly  Mrs.  Legere  think  of  her  condi 
tion?  And  that  which  had  happened — had  it  lasted 
for  an  hour  or  a  night? 

That  which  had  happened — there  memory,  in  a 
blinding  blast,  reasserted  itself.  What  had  been  but 
half-wittingly  accepted  was  now  wholly  known.  Hot 
irons  were  branding  upon  her  brain  the  full  history 
of  all  that  had  occurred :  the  deeds  for  which  she  had 
at  last  learned  the  name,  and  the  deeds  tfiat,  even 
in  her  own  frightened  soul,  were  nameless.  There 
was  nothing — nothing  of  her,  hand  and  foot,  and 
mouth  and  eye  and  soul — that  was  not  defiled. 
For  herself,  for  Max,  but  most  of  all  for  the 


52  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

hideous  facts  of  life,  she  shook  in  physical  disgust. 
Before  the  face  of  such  things,  what  must  birth  and 
marriage  mean  ?  She  opened  her  eyes,  but  she  could 
not  look  at  her  silent  witnesses;  she  shut  her  lids, 
but  she  saw,  behind  them,  the  hairy  arms  of  a  gorilla 
closing  on  her,  to  break  her  and  bear  her  away.  For 
one  moment,  all  that  she  had  loved  she  hated,  and 
for  the  next,  seizing  his  smiling  reassurance  as  the 
one  vow  that  could  legalize  what  nothing  could  re 
fine,  all  that  she  had  come  to  hate  she  tried  to  force 
herself  to  love. 

She  understood  now  so  much  that  she  had  never 
understood  before:  the  whispered  words  of  town 
gossip,  the  stray  glimpses  of  lovers  in  the  summer 
lanes,  the  cautions  and  the  commands  that  had  once 
so  galled  her  in  her  home. 

At  the  word,  her  mind  swung  back  to  far-away 
yesterday.  She  was  sorry  that  she  had  been  the 
cause — for  she  had  been  the  cause — of  the  spilling 
of  the  stew.  She  was  sorry  that  she  had  been  so 
sharp  with  Sallie.  She  wished  that  she  had  washed 
the  dishes  less  unwillingly.  She  still  feared — she 
more  than  ever  feared — the  swaying  bulk  of  mascu 
linity  that  had  been  her  father,  but  she  began  to  see 
in  him  the  logical  result  of  forces  that  were  them 
selves,  as  yet,  beyond  her  ken;  and  she  looked  with 
a  new  and  pitying  vision  upon  the  picture  of  her 
little,  work-worn  and  care-marked  mother  stooping 
over  the  polished  kitchen-stove. 

Her  breast  tossed  and  her  throat  throbbed;  but  she 
was  beyond  tears.  Painfully,  slowly,  yet  with  resolu 
tion,  she  struggled  back  to  her  sitting-posture  in  the 
bed. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  53 

In  this  position  she  found  herself  facing  a  long 
mirror  hung  against  the  opposite  wall,  and  in  the 
mirror  she  saw  what  was  herself.  With  a  low  cry, 
she  pulled  loose  the  sheet  and  covered  her  nakedness. 

That  done,  she  looked  again  at  the  strange  face 
that  fronted  her:  a  face  the  more  strange  because  it 
was  the  intimate  become  alien,  a  ruin,  an  accusation. 
Framed  in  a  tangle  of  dank  hair,  the  cheeks,  once 
pink,  were  chalky  now,  and  splotched  with  red,  the 
mouth  that  she  had  known  only  as  full  and  firm,  was 
loose  and  twisted;  the  eyes  that  had  been  blue,  now 
circled  with  black,  burned  in  blood-shot  fields  like 
coals  of  angry  fire. 

One  impulse  alone  directed  her:  to  find  her  clothes; 
to  put  them  on;  to  return,  as  far  as  the  mask  of 
appearances  would  take  her,  to  the  self  that  she  had 
been.  In  spite  of  aching  head  and  quivering  hands, 
she  wrapped  the  sheet  about  her  and,  with  infinite 
care,  got  from  the  bed.  The  floor  seemed  to  sweep 
up  to  meet  her,  but  she  steadied  herself  against  the 
wall  and,  each  timid  stride  a  separate  agony,  began 
to  stumble  about  the  room. 

She  looked  for  a  clothes-closet  or  wardrobe,  but 
there  was  neither.  The  only  door  was  the  door  of 
exit,  and  the  nearest  chair  was  empty.  In  a  corner 
she  saw  a  pile  of  linen:  laboriously  she  stooped  and 
picked  it  up,  unrolled  a  portion,  and  then,  gasping 
in  horror,  tossed  it  away.  On  the  other  chair  there 
lay  a  long  kimona  of  crimson.  She  lifted  it  and 
found,  neatly  arranged  below,  a  sheer  cambric  gar 
ment  edged  with  coarse  lace,  two  black  silk  stockings 
slashed  with  red,  and  a  pair  of  slippers,  high-heeled, 
with  buckles  of  brass — for  no  reason  that  she  could 


54  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

have  formulated,  the  sight  sickened  her.  She  went 
to  the  bureau  and  tugged  at  its  drawers,  but  all  that 
she  found  was  a  single  brown  bottle,  like  that  she 
had  first  observed  on  the  washstand,  filled  with  white 
tablets  and  labeled  "  Poison."  Obviously,  her  clothes 
had  been  taken  from  the  room. 

In  a  panic  of  shame,  she  groped  blindly  for  the 
door:  she  must  call  for  Mrs.  Legere.  She  grasped 
the  knob  and  turned  it — the  door  was  locked. 

Fear,  mad  and  unreasoning,  drove  its  spurs  into 
her  sides.  Forgetting  her  nausea,  heedless  of  her 
pain,  she  ran  first  to  one  window  and  then  to  the 
other,  but  the  bowed  shutters,  though  they  admitted 
the  light,  would  open  for  nothing  beside:  they  were 
fastened  with  riveted  loops  of  brass,  and,  looking 
through  the  small  space  between  them,  she  could 
catch  only  a  glimpse  of  the  street  far  below.  She 
tried  to  argue  that  the  key  might  have  fallen  from 
the  lock  within  the  room,  but  she  could  not  find  it, 
and,  the  sheet  dropping  from  her  shoulders,  she  be 
gan  to  rattle  at  the  knob,  and  then  to  pound  upon 
the  panels,  her  voice  rising  swiftly  from  a  low  call 
to  a  high,  hysterical,  frantic  cry  for  help. 

"  Mrs.  Legere !  Mrs.  Legere !  Mrs.  Legere  1  " 
she  cried,  and  then  as  suddenly  ceased,  tilted  against 
the  door,  and  collapsed  into  a  naked  heap  upon  the 
floor. 

All  power  of  movement  seemed  to  have  slipped 
from  her,  but  when  there  came  a  heavy  footfall  on 
the  stair,  a  swish  of  skirts  outside  and  the  loud  rasp 
ing  of  a  key  inserted  in  the  lock,  Mary  leaped  gal- 
vanically  to  her  feet,  gathered  the  sheet  about  her 
body,  and  flung  herself  upon  the  bed. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  55 

The  door  opened  and  closed  behind  Rose  Legere, 
who  promptly  relocked  it  and  slipped  the  key  into 
the  swelling  bosom  but  half  concealed  by  her  dragon- 
spotted,  baby-blue  neglige. 

"What  in  hell's  the  matter  with  you?"  she  de 
manded. 

A  little  more  rotund  of  figure,  a  little  looser  in 
the  cheeks,  and  more  patently  crayoned  and  pow 
dered  about  the  eyes,  a  little  more  obviously  painted 
and  a  little  older,  she  was  still  the  woman  of  the 
brewery's  advertisement.  But  her  forehead  was 
knotted  in  deep,  angry  wrinkles;  her  under  jaw  was 
thrust  so  far  forward  that  the  roll  of  fat  beneath 
it  was  invisible,  and  her  eyes  snapped  with  malice. 

Mary  shrank  back  among  the  pillows. 

"  Weren't  you  yellin'  ?  "  persisted  Rose.  "  Did 
you  lose  your  voice  doin'  it?  What  in  the  hell's  the 
matter  with  you,  I  say?  " 

With  a  sweep  of  her  stout  arm,  she  seized  the 
girl's  bare  shoulder  and  shook  it  till  Mary's  teeth 
clicked  like  castanets. 

"  I'm  not  goin'  to  have  any  such  racket  in  my 
house !  "  the  woman  asseverated,  as  she  plied  her  pun 
ishment.  "  You've  got  to  learn  first-off  to  keep  your 
mouth  to  yourself,  and  be  dead  sure  if  you  don't  I'll 
give  you  a  real  beatin'." 

She  tossed  Mary  from  her,  as  if  her  victim  had 
been  a  bundle  of  straw,  and  stood  up  again,  arms 
akimbo,  breathing  scarcely  beyond  her  normal  speed. 

Mary  was  half  mad  and  wholly  sick  with  dread. 
She  wanted  to  cry  out  for  rescue  and  dared  not.  She 
wanted  to  rise  and  try  to  force  the  door  or  break  open 
the  shutters,  but  she  could  not  move.  She  could  only 


56  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

lie  there  panting  for  breath,  with  her  mouth  gasping 
and  her  heart  hammering  at  her  breast.  She  had 
closed  her  eyes.  She  opened  them  just  in  time  to 
see  Rose,  whose  slippered  foot  had  touched  something 
on  the  floor,  stoop,  pick  up,  and  place  beside  the  key 
in  her  bosom,  a  crumpled  purple-bordered  handker 
chief. 

"  Now  then,"  said  the  woman  in  a  tone  that,  if 
still  hard,  was  at  least  less  intense  than  its  predeces 
sor,  "  try  to  tell  me  what's  the  trouble,  like  some 
body  this  side  of  Matteawan." 

With  a  supreme  lunge  at  courage,  Mary  got  her 
voice. 

"  I  want  my  clothes,"  she  said  dully.  "  And 
where's  Max?  " 

"  Your  clothes  ain't  fit  to  wear,"  said  Rose;  "  an' 
I  don't  know  where  Max  is.  What  you  need  is 
breakfast." 

"  I  want  my  clothes,"  monotonously  repeated 
Mary.  "  I  couldn't  eat  to  save  my  life.  Hasn't 
Max  come  back?  " 

But  Rose  did  not  seem  to  hear  the  question. 

u  Nonsense,  honey,"  she  said,  her  anger  seeming 
now  entirely  passed.  "  Of  course  you  must  eat.  I 
got  up  on  purpose  for  it,  and  I've  set  that  nigger 
cooking  a  perfect  peach  of  a  breakfast." 

"  I  want  my  clothes." 

Rose  leaned  over  the  bed  and  put  a  soothing  hand 
upon  her  questioner's  fevered  forehead. 

"  Now  don't  lose  your  nerve,  dearie,"  she  advised. 
"  I'm  your  friend — honest,  I  am.  You  rest  awhile 
and  eat  a  little,  and  then  maybe  we'll  talk  things 


over." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  57 

"He  hasn't  come  yet?  " 

"  No,  he  hasn't.  But  why  are  you  lettin'  that  jar 
you?  Perhaps  he's  sick,  too.  Perhaps  he's  had  some 
kind  of  a  scrap  with  his  old  man.  How  do  I  know 
what's  hit  him?  He'll  show  up  all  right  in  the 
end  and,  till  he  does  show  up,  you  just  make  yourself 
at  home  here  and  don't  bother.  I'll  take  care  of 
you." 

Something  in  the  woman's  solicitude — or  it  may 
have  been  the  quick  and  unexplained  change  from 
violence  to  tenderness — frightened  Mary  even  more 
than  the  initial  outburst  had  frightened  her. 

"  I  want  to  go  home,"  she  quavered. 

"  Sure  you  want  to  go  home,"  Rose  acquiesced, 
without  moving  a  muscle.  "  But  how  can  you  go? 
Max  told  me  you'd  sent  your  people  a  note  saying 
you'd  hiked  out  with  him  to  be  married,  and  how 
can  you  go  home  until  he  gets  back  here  and  you 
can  take  him  along  and  show  the  goods?  " 

Her  tone  was  lightly  argumentative,  but  it  was 
also  stolidly  merciless,  and  it  hurled  true  to  its  mark 
the  shaft  of  conviction.  Out  of  the  yesterday,  Mary 
heard  the  voice  of  her  father  that  was  the  voice  of 
a  society  rigidly  shaped  by  the  conditions  of  its  own 
fashioning : 

"  Bay  'un  thirty  year  old  an'  noot  another  sin  ag'in 
'un,  I  would  beat  'un  within  a  bare  inch  o'  'er  deeth, 
an'  turn  'un  oot  to  live  the  life  'un  had  picked  fur 
herself!" 

She  understood  that  statement  now. 

"  I  can  go  to  Max's,"  she  hazarded. 

"  To—wheref  " 

"  To  Max's  father's/1 


5  8  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Maybe  you  can;  but  it's  a  long  trip  to  Hun 
gary." 

Mary  answered  nothing.  Rose  had  only  confirmed 
what  the  girl  had  for  an  hour  feared. 

"  You  see  how  it  is,"  pursued  Rose,  reading 
Mary's  silence  with  a  practiced  mind.  "  Better  let 
me  take  care  of  you." 

Mary's  face  was  hidden.  Again  she  felt  New 
York  as  a  malevolent  consciousness,  a  living  prison 
implacably  raising  around  her  its  insurmountable 
walls.  There  was,  she  thought,  nothing  left  her  but 
the  diminishing  hope  of  Max's  return. 

"  Now  you  will  eat,  won't  you?  "  Rose  was  con 
tinuing. 

Mary  shook  her  head. 

Rose  patted  quietly  one  of  the  clenched  hands  that 
lay  close  to  her. 

"  Better  do  it,  dearie,"  she  said.  "  I'm  your 
friend;  remember  that.  You  can  have  whatever  you 
want." 

Mary  mastered  what  strength  remained  to  her. 
She  raised  herself  on  her  elbow. 

"  Then  let  me  go !  "  she  pleaded,  extending  an 
open  palm  like  a  beggar  asking  for  a  crust.  "  I 
don't  care  if  my  clothes  is  mussed.  I  don't  care 
what'll  happen  afterward.  Just  let  me  go!  " 

"  You're  a  fool,"  Rose  made  cool  rejoinder. 
"Where'dyougo?" 

"I  don't  know?" 

"What'd  become  of  you?" 

"  I  don't  care." 

"  Well,  you  would  care,  all  right,  all  right.  You 
can't  go  home,  and  you've  no  clothes  and  no  money 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  59 

and  no  references.  You  couldn't  get  work  anywhere 
in  New  York,  and  you  couldn't  get  away  from  New 
York." 

"  I "  Mary  groped  through  the  darkness  of 

her  soul.  "  I  can  do  housework." 

"  Not  without  a  reference  you  can't." 

"  I  could  go  to  some  office " 

"  If  you  went  to  any  charity-joint,  they'd  throw 
you  out  because  of  what's  happened  to  you." 

"  I  could  beg  on  the  street  if  I  had  to." 

"  'Do  you  think  the  men  in  this  town  give  money 
for  nothing  to  a  good-looking  girl?  You  could  go 
on  the  street,  that's  what  you  could  do." 

The  phrase  was  new  to  its  hearer,  but  the  tone 
explained  it. 

"  Then,"  she  stumbled  forward,  "  I  could  go  to 
the  police.  They'd  help  me.  I  could " 

But  at  that  word  Rose  flew  into  a  torrent  of  anger 
and  abuse  that  dwarfed  the  former  tempest. 

"You  could,  could  you?"  she  cried.  "That's 
your  game,  is  it,  you  sneaking  little  innocent?  I'll 
bet  you're  a  damn  sight  wiser  than  you  let  on.  But 
you  don't  know  this  town:  you  can  take  that  much 
from  me.  Go  to  the  police !  Go  to  'em !  The  cops 
on  this  beat  are  my  friends :  if  you  don't  believe  it, 
I'll  bring  'em  in  and  introduce  you.  They're  my 
friends,  and  so's  the  whole  precinct  my  friends.  Go 
to  'em!  Go  to  'em,  and  I'll  have  you  pinched  and 
locked  up  for  bein'  what  you  are !  " 

Mary  had  drawn  away  from  the  blast,  but  Rose's 
powerful  fist  caught  her  under  the  chin  and  sent  her 
crashing  down  on  the  bed. 

"  You  don't  come  that  on  me !  "  the  jailer  con- 


60  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

tinued.  "  You've  got  your  choice:  you  can  stay  here 
and  live  easy,  or  walk  out  and  go  to  jail,  and  that's 
all  you  can  do.  Max  ain't  comin'  back,  and  you 
always  knew  he  wouldn't  come  back.  You  know 
what  this  house  is  as  well  as  I  do,  and  you've  got  to 
stay  here  and  earn  your  keep.  If  you  give  one  yip 
I'll  have  the  cops  in!  You  don't  want  to  eat,  hey? 
Well  then,  you  shan't  eatl  You  can  lay  there  and 
starve,  or  you  can  knock  on  the  door  and  get  the 
best  breakfast  you  ever  had,  all  ready  for  you.  Do 
what  you  please;  but  if  you  let  out  one  yip  I'll  ham 
mer  the  life  out  of  you!  " 

She  turned  and  left  the  room.  She  banged  the 
door  behind  her,  and  Mary,  in  a  swirling  dream, 
heard  herself  again  locked  in  her  cell. 


THE  BIRDS  OF  PREY 

THROUGH  all  the  days  that  immediately  fol 
lowed — the  days  that  were  nights,  and  the 
nights  that  were  red  noondays — a  thousand 
horrors,  from  subtle  word  to  recurring  experience, 
conjoined  to  assure  to  Mary  the  reality  of  her  servi 
tude.  All  of  that  first  day,  after  Rose  had  left  her 
with  the  dark  blood  oozing  from  her  cut  chin  upon 
the  scented  pillows,  she  lay,  like  a  wounded  dog, 
now  in  a  faint  and  then  in  a  stupor,  on  the  disordered 
bed.  As  the  sunlight  shifted  and  the  shadows  length 
ened  in  the  room,  torpor  gave  way  to  reawakened 
fear,  and  she  crawled  into  a  corner  and  tried  to  hide 
herself,  trembling,  with  chattering  teeth,  at  every 
sound  of  laughter  that  rose  from  the  lower  floors, 
at  every  footstep  upon  the  stair. 

Thrice  Rose  returned.  Each  time  she  bore  a 
steaming  dish  that,  as  the  girl's  physical  pain  grew 
less,  assailed  the  nostrils  with  increasing  poignancy. 
Each  time  Mary  shook  her  stubborn  russet  head. 
And  each  time  the  visit  ended  in  a  beating. 

Escape  by  door  or  window  was  out  of  the  question ; 
to  attempt  to  raise  an  alarm  was  to  invite  fresh 
violence;  and  gradually  grew  the  certainty  that  the 
situation  was  genuinely  as  the  jailer  had  described 
it:  that  the  street  was  worse  than  the  house,  and 
that  Mary  was  her  own  prisoner.  She  found  the 

61 


62  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

bottle  labeled  "  Poison,"  and  bit  one  of  the  tablets, 
but  she  was  young  and  afraid,  and  she  spat  the  burn 
ing  crumbs  from  her  mouth.  She  did  not  dare  to 
die,  and  when  Rose  came  again  to  the  room,  her 
captive  was  too  weak  to  refuse  the  broth  that  was 
fed  her,  as  if  she  were  a  sick  child,  from  a  spoon. 

"  You're  a  dear  girl,  after  all,"  said  the  mistress, 
as  she  administered  the  grateful  food.  "  You  do 
as  I  say  and  you  won't  never  be  sorry.  All  I  want 
is  to  have  you  sensible.  I'm  your  friend." 

Mary  said  nothing:  she  was  too  weak  to  answer. 

"  And  now,"  Rose  pursued,  "  I'll  just  give  you 
a  drink." 

And  when  she  had  come  back,  she  had  not  come 
back  alone. 

The  worst  of  prisons  is  that  in  which  the  door 
is  so  cunningly  closed  upon  the  inmate  that,  at  last, 
after  the  brutality  is  familiar,  the  inmate  seems  origi 
nally  to  have  closed  it  upon  herself,  and  in  such 
a  fortress  of  pain  Mary  now  found  herself  restrained. 
The  process  was  simple.  It  was  merely  first  to 
wound  and  then  to  inure.  The  descent  to  hell  is 
not  easy;  it  is  red  with  blood  and  wet  with  tears; 
but  hell  itself  must  be  endured. 

It  was  not  for  some  days  that  any  woman  save 
Rose  came  to  Mary's  cell  and  then,  one  afternoon, 
two  women  followed  the  grating  key. 

They  were  alike  only  as  to  clothes.  Both  wore 
loose  neglige  garments,  but  whereas  the  one  was 
sturdy  and  German-blonde,  with  straw-colored  hair, 
round  and  heavy  face,  blue  eyes  and  peasant  frame 
— a  younger  Rose — the  other  was  wiry,  compact,  her 
brows  low  and  dark  under  somber  hair,  her  full 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  63 

cheeks  red  only  in  defiance  of  a  swarthy  skin,  her 
eyes  black  and  her  mouth  vermillion.  It  was  this 
one  who,  with  an  accent  that  a  more  sophisticated 
ear  than  Mary's  would  have  placed  along  the  Seine, 
was  the  first  to  speak. 

"  'Ello!  "  she  laughed,  her  teeth  gleaming  between 
her  lips  like  pomegranate  seeds.  "  We  have  come  to 
make  the  call." 

Without  awaiting  a  reply,  she  jumped  upon  the 
bed,  drew  her  feet  beneath  her,  and  produced  and 
lit  a  cigarette.  The  German  girl  moved  more  slowly 
to  the  other  side  and  there  elaborately  ensconced  her 
self. 

Mary  looked  at  her  visitors  without  immediately 
replying.  She  had  not,  in  fact,  the  remotest  idea 
of  what  was  the  fitting  word. 

But  the  French  girl  was  unruffled  by  this  silence. 
She  flung  her  head  back  upon  a  white  neck  and  sent 
a  slow  column  of  blue  smoke  curling  toward  the  ceil 
ing. 

"  My  name,"  she  explained,  with  an  odd  clipping 
of  her  speech,  "  eet  ees  Celeste,  an'  my  good  frien' 
here,"  she  continued  with  an  easy  gesture  of  the 
cigarette,  "  she  ees  Fritzie — chust  a  bar-bar-ous  Ger 
man." 

Mary  looked  at  her  with  a  gaze  large  and  listless. 

"An'  you'  name?"  pursued  Celeste,  "eet  ees — 
what?"  ' 

Fritzie  supplied  the  answer,  speaking  in  a  ponder 
ous  contralto. 

"  Her  name  is  Mary,"  said  she. 

"  Bien — a  pretty  name,"  Celeste  rattled  on,  pre 
cisely  as  if  her  unwilling  entertainer  had  made  the 


64  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

response.  "I  like  eet  well;  but" — and  she  studied 
with  unobtrusive  care  the  russet-framed,  indignant 
face  before  her — "  eet  ees  not  so  good  as  ees  your 
self.  I  t'ink — let  me  see — yaas:  I  t'ink  I  shall  call 
you  '  Violet.' — Violet,  why  you  don't  eat  more  een 
dees  'ouse?  " 

"  I'm  hardly  ever  hungry,"  said  Mary. 

"  Not  hongry? — Oh-h,  but  you  mohst  be  hongry! 
Anyone  so  young  mohst  want  to  eat,  and  anyone  so 
beautiful  mohst  eat  so  as  not  to  loose  the  beauty. — 
Ees  eet  not  so,  Fritzie  ?  " 

The  German  girl  smiled  gently  and  nodded  her 
blonde  head. 

"  Ach,  yes,"  she  rumbled.    "  The  liebchen !  " 

"  No,"  insisted  Mary.  "  I  don't  care  about  noth 
ing.  I  have  a  headache  all  the  time.  I  have  one 


now." 


Celeste  jumped  lightly  to  the  floor:  it  was  as  if 
to  uncoil  her  feet  and  to  reach  the  door  required  but 
a  single  movement. 

"  Un  moment!  "  she  laughed.  "  I  shall  feex  the 
mal  de  tete  immediate  1  " 

There  was  no  time  for  remonstrance;  the  door 
closed  upon  her  concluding  word,  and  Mary  was 
left  there  gazing  into  the  stolid,  sphinxlike  face  of 
the  placidly  smiling  German.  It  was  not  a  bad  face, 
and  soon  Mary  realized  that  it  was  a  contented  one. 

Fritzie  was  returning  her  look  with  an  equal  curi 
osity. 

"Are  you  vorried?  "  she  finally  inquired. 

"  No,"  lied  Mary  proudly. 

"  I  dought  you  looked  like  vorried,"  the  German 
continued.  "  Bud  you  should  be  nod.  Dis  iss  a 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  65 

goot  place.  Dere  are  loads  vorse  blaces  in  New 
York  dan  dis:  I  know  'em." 

She  paused,  but  Mary's  lips  remained  closed,  her 
eyes  fixed. 

"  You  bed  I  know  'urn !  "  Fritzie  repeated.  "  Bud 
dis  blace — vhy,  ve  haf  de  best  meals,  so  goot  nobody 
gould  besser  haf !  I  like  dis  blace." 

A  faint  question  shot  into  Mary's  face.  At  once 
Fritzie  answered  it. 

"  Dat's  righd.  Listen :  I  gome  over  here  two 
year  ago  in  de  steerage.  Some  of  de  vomen,  men 
meet  dem — oh,  most  all  de  nod-family  vons — un'  took 
dem  to  dese  here  intelligence  office  dat  are  only 
fakes,  un'  sold  dem,  vidout  dere  knowin'  nussin'  of 
it,  fur  ten  un'  fifteen  dollar'  each.  Bud  I  vas  careful. 
I  get  a  real  tshob. — Ach,  himmel!  " 

She  waved  a  broad  palm  in  disgust. 

"  Id  vas  bad  enough  in  de  steerage  mit  all  de 
sailor-mens  kissin'  you  to-day  un'  kickin'  you  to-mor 
row;  bud  dat  tshob  of  mine,  dat  vas  de  real  limit! 
I  gome  over  here  because  I  vouldn't  vork  in  de 
fields  back  home,  bud  in  dat  boarding-house  vhere 
I  get  dat  tshob,  I  get  up  at  dree  o'clock  every  mornin', 
because  some  of  de  mens  vork  in  Jefferson  Market, 
un'  I  haf  to  scrub,  un'  make  de  beds,  un'  help  cook, 
un'  vait  on  dable,  un'  vash  dishes,  un'  sweep  de  whole 
house  oud.  Un'  den  till  late  at  nighd  I  haf  to  help 
cook,  un'  vait  on  dable,  un'  vash  dishes  some  more 
still.  Vhenever  I  am  sick,  or  late,  or  break  von  dish, 
or  a  boarder  don'  pay,  I  gets  docked.  Un'  almost 
every  veek  I'm  sick  or  late  or  break  a  dish  or  a 
boarder  don'  pay.  My  vages  is  d'ree  dollar  a  veek, 
un'  I  never  gets  more  as  two-fifty — sometime,  two — • 


66          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

un'  dat  vill  nod  pay  my  clothes  ad  first,  un'  don1 
pay  my  doctor  bills  after-yard." 

The  story  was  told  monotonously,  without  much 
show  of  emotion,  but  it  was  enough  of  itself  to  wring 
a  word  from  the  woman  to  whom  it  was  addressed. 

"  You  got  sick?  "  asked  Mary. 

"  Who  vouldn't?  "  said  Fritzie.  "  You  bed  I  get 
sick,  un'  vhen  I  gome  oud  of  de  hospital,  de  young 
doctor — he'd  been  makin'  grand  lofe  to  me — he  tell 
me  I  vas  too  nice  a  girl  to  vork  my  hands  off  fur 
nussin'  a  veek,  un'  he  gif  me  his  visitin'  card  vith  a 
writin'  on  it  to  a  voman  he  knowed,  un'  I  quit  un' 
vent  dere." 

She  paused,  but  Mary  was  silent,  and  the  German 
resumed : 

"  It  vas  a  goot  place,  bud  nod  so  goot  as  dis  von. 
I  stay  a  mont'  till  she  move  to  Philadelphia.  Den 
I  vent  to  anozzer  house,  not  so  goot  as  dat  first, 
fur  two  mont's  till  the  voman  die.  Un'  den,  after 
some  more,  I  gome  here,  pretty  soon,  to  Miss  Rose's. 
No  " — she  waved  her  thick  hand  toward  the  door 
through  which  Celeste  had  lately  passed — "  I'm  nod 
like  dat  Frenchie.  She's  vhat  Phil  Beekman  calls 
a  '  gongenital,'  vatever  dat  iss ;  I  vork  hard  enough 
now,  und  I  vanted  to  vork  righd  den;  bud  I  tell  you 
I  could  not  stand  it,  dough  I  vas  so  strong.  No, 
I'm  glad  I  gome  here." 

She  leaned  back  upon  her  elbow. 

"  Now,  dis  Celeste "  she  began,  but  the  French 

girl,  just  then  entering,  came  with  an  air  that  was 
a  sufficient  explanation  of  her  never  complex  tempera 
ment. 

"  Voila!  "  she  smiled,  holding  aloft  a  long  glass 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  67 

filled  by  a  dull  green  liquid.  "  Let  the  leetle  girl 
tak  some  of  thees  wheech  I  meex  for  her." 

Before  she  had  well  realized  what  she  was  doing, 
Mary  had  accepted  the  glass. 

"  What  is  it?  "  she  asked  weakly. 

"  Absinthe,"  replied  Celeste. 

"  It  smells  like  licorice,"  said  Mary. 

"  Ah,  but  no;  eet  ees  not  that.  You  try  thees,  an' 
then  you  can  eat." 

"  But  I  don't  think  I  want  to  eat." 

"  Poof !  That  ees  folly !  See,  now,  I  meex  thees 
myself — I  myself  have  frappe  eet.  Ees  eet  what 
you  call  polite  that  you  say  '  no  '  to  me  ?  Say,  now : 
ees  eet?  " 

Involuntarily  Mary  smiled.  It  was  a  rueful  little 
smile,  but  it  was  a  smile  of  exhausted  consent. 

"It  won't  hurt  me?" 

"Thees?  You  do  not  know  eet.  Eet  ees  the 
enemy  of  all  the  headache,  of  all  the  heartache,  of 
all  the  bad  nerve." 

For  answer  Mary  drained  the  glass,  and  when 
her  visitors  left  her  they  turned  no  key  upon  their 
exit. 

So,  slowly,  through  all  those  early  days,  and 
through  the  days  that  immediately  followed  them, 
the  spell  of  the  situation  worked.  There  was  in 
famy,  there  was  torture.  The  unending  procession 
of  visitors — clerks,  drummers,  car-conductors,  team 
sters,  gamesters,  thieves,  brothers  in  the  fraternity  of 
lust,  equals  in  the  night  of  horror,  mostly  drunken, 
nearly  all  unclean  of  body  and  everyone  filthy  of 
mind — the  green  government  note  was  their  certifi 
cate  of  qualification,  the  money,  however  acquired, 


68  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

constituted  their  right  to  those  counterfeits  which  the 
house  of  Rose  Legere  was  maintained  to  sell.  For 
that  note,  themselves  the  chattels  of  conditions,  they 
might  caress  or  beat ;  for  that,  they  might  take  what 
ever  their  hearts  demanded.  Was  the  slave  wounded  ? 
Was  she  ill?  Was  she  heartbroken?  She  must 
smile;  she  must  be  one  woman  to  all  men.  She  must 
receive  the  blows  with  laughter,  the  ribaldry,  the 
insults  and  the  curses  as  wit.  She  must  pass  from 
this  to  that — and  she  must  not  care. 

And  yet  Mary,  who  was  Violet  now,  could  do 
nothing  but  take  as  final  the  conclusion  that  Rose 
had  drawn  for  her.  To  return  home,  even  if  she 
had  the  money,  would  be  impossible,  because  to  do 
so  would  be  to  court  her  father's  anger  and  her 
mother's  shame,  with  no  hope  of  either  pardon  or 
justification.  To  go  out  into  the  cheerless  street  that 
sent  its  growling  echoes  up  to  her  curtained  window 
would  be,  she  was  assured,  to  deliver  herself  to  ar 
rest  or  starvation.  She  was  ignorant  and  young. 
With  no  knowledge  of  the  laws  and  the  charities  of 
the  monster  town,  she  saw  only  that  the  former,  in 
uniform,  was  a  back-door  friend  of  her  keepers,  and 
she  was  told  that  the  latter  never  helped  before  they 
first  publicly  burned  upon  their  victims'  brows  the 
thenceforth  ineradicable  brand  of  infamy.  Without 
there  was,  at  the  least,  hunger,  drudgery  and  dis 
grace;  at  the  most,  starvation,  jail,  death.  Within, 
where  fresh  wounds  meant  but  little,  there  obtained, 
under  only  a  velvet-pawed  tyranny,  a  tolerable  democ 
racy  of  disrepute,  an  equality  of  degradation,  where 
food,  at  any  rate,  and  shelter  and  raiment  were  cer 
tain,  and  where  old  scars  a^id  fresh  bruises  were 


69 

hidden  from  the  world:  the  price  was  no  more  than 
supine  acquiescence. 

Anything  like  financial  independence  was,  of 
course,  impossible:  the  slaves  of  Rose  Legere  were 
as  much  slaves  as  any  mutilated  black  man  of  the 
Congo,  or  any  toil-cramped  white  man  in  a  factory. 
Their  wages  were  paid  to  the  supervisor,  their  few 
belongings  secretly  searched  for  gratuities,  and 
though  one-half  of  each  payment  was,  theoretically, 
the  portion  of  the  employe,  rent  and  board  and 
lingerie  demanded,  and  must  needs  secure,  prices  that 
left  each  woman  hopelessly  in  debt  to  the  mistress  of 
the  house. 

With  her  senses  in  revolt,  the  mind  and  body  of 
the  newly-christened  Violet  came,  by  insidious  de 
grees,  nevertheless  to  approach  some  likeness  to  adapt 
ability.  Her  material  wants  never  went  unsupplied, 
and  such  intelligence  as  she  possessed  began  to  swing 
toward  that  point  of  view  to  differ  from  which  could 
bring  nothing  save  serious  discomfort.  To  the  hope 
of  Max's  return  she  still,  in  her  own  heart,  clung 
with  that  tenacity  which  only  a  woman  can  exert  upon 
an  acknowledged  impossibility,  but  she  felt  even  this 
hope  shrink  between  her  clutching  fingers,  and,  doing 
her  best  to  reason,  she  knew  that,  even  should  the 
miracle  happen,  Max  had  brought  her  and  left  her 
here  with  the  intent  that  she  should  fulfill  her  eco 
nomic  destiny. 

Too  dull  to  see  deeply  into  causes,  she  could  only 
accept  the  slowly  numbing  hail  of  effects.  Until  a 
few  days  since,  she  had  been  a  child,  and,  like  most 
children,  the  individual  at  fault  in  every  personal 
catastrophe.  It  was  thus  that  she  began  by  blaming 


70          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

herself  for  all  that  had  now  befallen  her;  it  was 
only  at  moments  of  growth  that  she  turned  her  anger 
first  against  her  own  parents,  then  against  the  active 
agent  and  finally  against  his  principal,  and  it  would 
be  but  after  deeper  vision  and  harder  usage  that 
she  could  see  both  herself  and  them,  and  the  whole 
company  that  made  them  possible,  as  mere  grist  in 
the  mill  of  a  merciless  machine. 

And  yet  for  a  long  time  her  one  passion  was  the 
passion  of  release.  Without  clothes  and  money  and 
protection  she  could  understand  no  escape;  but  for 
these  means  she  at  last  found  courage  to  appeal  to 
the  one  source  from  which  she  could  conceive  of  their 
coming. 


VI 

AN  ANGEL  UNAWARES 

THE  man  to  whom  she  first  spoke,  in  a  stolen 
instant,  descending  the  darkened  stair,  was 
a  small  shopkeeper,  fat  and  pliable,  beyond 
the  age  of  violence,  and,  as  he  had  just  told  her,  a 
husband  and  the  father  of  a  girl  of  her  own  age. 

"  Listen,"  she  said,  with  one  trembling  hand  upon 
his  shoulder,  "  I  want  you  to  do  me  a  favor." 

"  Anything  you  say,  Violet,"  he  chuckled. 

"  Don't  talk  so  loud,  then.  I — I  want  you  to 
take  me  out  of  here." 

The  man  looked  at  her,  through  the  rosy  twilight, 
in  a  flattered  bewilderment. 

"  Like  me  as  much  as  that,  do  you?  "  he  sparred. 

"  You  don't  understand.  Of  course,  I  like  you ; 
but  what  I  meant  was " 

He  interrupted  her,  his  fat  fingers  complacently 
patting  her  cheek. 

"  It's  not  me  that  don't  tumble  to  the  facts,"  he 
said;  "  it's  you.  I  told  you  I  was  a  family  man. 
I  couldn't  put  you  anywhere." 

"  I  don't  mean  that.    I  mean " 

But  again  he  cut  in  upon  her  labored  explanation, 
his  commercial  mind  traveling  along  lines  in  which 
it  had  been  forced  all  his  life  to  travel,  and  his  pride 
entrenching  itself  behind  the  trivial  rampart  of  his 
income. 

91 


72  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  You  girls !  "  he  laughed,  in  palpable  deception. 
"  You  all  think  I've  got  a  lot  of  money.  Why,  there 
ain't  no  use  thinkin'  you  can  bleed  me.  I'm  a  busi 
ness  man,  an'  I  do  everything  on  a  straight  business 
basis,  but  I  wouldn't  rent  a  flat  for  the  finest  of  you 
that  ever  walked  Fourteenth  Street." 

Violet's  answer  was  brief.  That  she  should  have 
given  her  confidence  to  such  a  beast,  that  such  a 
beast  should  continue  to  thrive  in  the  world  that  was 
closed  to  her,  and  that,  her  pitiable  confidence  once 
given,  she  should  be  so  grossly  misinterpreted — these 
things  sent  a  red  rage  rushing  to  her  now  always 
incarnadined  cheeks.  She  gave  the  shopkeeper  a  push 
that  nearly  sent  him  rolling  to  the  foot  of  the  stairs. 

"  Get  away  from  me !  "  she  whispered  hoarsely. 
"  Get  away!  I  wouldn't  have  you  for  a  gift!  " 

The  man  stumbled  and  gripped  the  rose-colored 
lamp  upon  the  newel-post,  which  swayed,  under  his 
rocking  weight,  like  a  palm-tree  in  a  storm.  He 
gasped  for  breath,  got  it,  and,  shaking  his  fist  up 
ward  through  the  shadows,  began  to  bellow  forth 
a  storm  of  oaths  that,  for  foulness,  utterly  outdid 
the  ejaculations  to  which,  from  both  sexes,  Violet 
was  already  becoming  accustomed. 

"  You  come  down  here,"  he  courageously  shouted, 
"  and  I'll  give  you  the  worst  beating  you  ever  had 
in  your  life !  Nice  place,  this  is !  I'll  have  it  pinched 
— you  see  if  I  don't !  You  can't  make  an  easy  thing 
out  o'  me !  You've  robbed  me,  anyhow.  You'll  get 
what's  comin'  to  you !  " — And  he  ended  with  the 
single  epithet  to  which  those  four  walls  were  un 
accustomed. 

Rose  ran  out  from  the  parlor. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  73 

"  Shut  up,  you !  "  she  commanded  of  the  disturber, 
in  a  low  tone  that  nevertheless  compelled  obedience. 
"What's  the  trouble,  Violet?" 

Violet  leaned  against  the  stair-wall,  half-way  up, 
her  burning  hands  pressed  to  her  burning  face.  She 
was  mad  with  anger  and  shame,  but  she  was  also 
afraid. 

"  You  heard  him,"  she  gasped. 

"  Yes,"  snapped  the  visitor,  his  voice  uncon 
trollably  resuming  its  former  timbre,  "  and  you 
heard  me,  too !  " 

The  mistress  is,  of  necessity,  always,  in  a  crisis, 
against  the  slave. 

"  Well,"  said  Rose,  "  tell  me  what  she  done." 

Violet,  however,  saw  at  once  the  necessity  of  chang 
ing  the  issue. 

"  He  says  he's  been  robbed !  "  she  called  down  the 
stairs.  And  then  she  ran  after  her  words,  and  stood 
under  the  lamp,  facing  them  both,  her  arms  extended, 
the  flowing  sleeves  trembling  with  the  emotion  that 
they  covered  but  could  not  conceal.  "  Search  me!  " 
she  commanded.  "If  you  think  I  took  a  cent  of 
yours,  search  me !  " 

She  was  a  vision  that  brought  conviction  with  it. 

Before  the  sputtering  visitor  could  correct  the 
situation,  Rose  had,  perhaps  against  her  will,  been 
converted.  She  took  the  man's  hat  from  the  hall- 
rack  at  her  side,  put  it  on  his  head,  opened  the  street- 
door,  and  gently  propelled  him  through  it. 

1  You're  drunk,"  she  said,  "  an'  you'd  better 
get  out  before  I  call  the  cop.  There  ain't  no 
badger  business  in  this  house,  an'  don't  you  for 
get  it  I" 


74 

She  shut  the  door,  and  turned  calmly  to  Violet. 

"  How  much  did  you  get?  "  she  asked. 

"  Why,  Miss  Rose,  you  know " 

"  I  mean  what  did  you  touch  him  for?  You 
mustn't  play  that  sort  of  game  here:  it  gives  the 
house  a  bad  name.  But  just  this  once  we'll  divide 
up  an'  not  say  anything  more  about  it." 

Violet's  eyes  opened  wide. 

"  I  didn't  steal  a  penny,"  she  declared. 

Rose  regarded  her  with  a  softening  countenance. 

"Word  of  honor?"  she  asked. 

"  Word  of  honor,"  vowed  Violet. 

"  All  right,  but  even  if  you  do  touch  them,  you 
mustn't  ever  let  them  think  you  do.  A  man'll  for 
give  you  for  hurtin'  him  anywhere  but  in  his  pocket- 
book. — You're  all  worked  up,  dearie.  Come  on  out 
to  the  kitchen  an'  have  a  bottle  of  beer." 

As  they  were  pouring  the  drinks,  a  heavy  foot 
sounded  in  the  outside  passageway  and  a  careful  four 
knocks  followed  upon  the  rear  door. 

"  That's  Larry,"  said  Rose,  and  drew  the  bolt. 

A  policeman's  hat  was  poked  through  the  door 
way,  followed  by  a  flushed,  genial  Irish  face,  and  a 
tall,  hulking  body  in  regulation  uniform. 

"  I'm  terrible  dry,"  grinned  Larry. 

"  Then  you've  come  to  the  right  shop,"  was  Rose's 
greeting.  "  We're  just  havin'  a  little  drop  ourselves. 
Larry,  this  is  my  new  friend,  Violet." 

The  policeman  grinned  again,  and  sat  carefully 
upon  the  edge  of  a  kitchen-chair,  in  evident  fear  that 
his  bulk  might  prove  too  great  for  it. 

"  Glad  to  know  you,"  he  said. 

"  Larry's  on  this  beat  nights,"  Rose  explained  to 


75 

Violet,  "  an'  him  an'  the  lieutenant  look  after  us — 
don't  you,  Riley?  " 

"  Well,  what  use  is  a  frind  if  he  don't  take  care 
of  yez,  Miss  Rose?  We  do  the  bist  we  can." 

"I  know  that. — What'll  it  be,  Larry?  We're 
takin'  beer,  but  there's  wine  on  the  ice  if  you  want 
it." 

"  I'll  just  have  a  small  drap  of  liquor,  ma'am, 
please,"  said  Riley. 

Rose  poured  and  handed  to  him  a  glass  of  whiskey. 

"  When  you  came  by,"  she  inquired,  "  did  you  see 
a  fat  man  throwin'  fits  in  our  gutter?  " 

"  Why,  I  did  not.  Have  ye  been  afther  havin'  a 
rumpus  the  night?" 

"  Oh,  no — only  that  fat  little  fellow  that  keeps 
the  jewelry-store  around  the  corner.  He  was  drunk, 
an'  I  threw  him  out.  If  he  tries  to  get  gay,  let  me 
know,  will  you  ?  " 

"  Of  course  I'll  let  ye  know — an'  here's  to  your 
very  good  health,  ma'am  an'  miss. — But  you  may 
rist  aisy;  that  there  won't  be  no  throuble." 

"  I  know  that:  he's  too  scared  of  his  wife. — Have 
another,  won't  you  ?  " 

The  officer  rose. 

"  No,  thank  ye  kindly,"  he  said.  "  I  wanted  but 
the  drap,  ma'am." 

"  And  how  are  Mrs.  Riley  and  the  children?  " 

Larry's  face  became  a  web  of  smiling  wrinkles. 

"Grand,"  he  said;  "the  auld  woman's  grand — 
you  ought  to  see  her  in  the  new  silk  dress  I  bought 
'er  the  day — all  grane  wid  fancy  trimmin's  from 
Six'  Avenoo.  An'  the  kiddies  is  thrivin'.  Cecilia'll 
soon  be  havin'  to  go  to  work  an'  help  the  family 


76          THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

funds,  she's  that  sthrong  and  hearty,  an'  young  Van 
Wyck  is  such  a  divil  that  the  teacher  throwed  him 
out  of  school.  He's  licked  all  the  b'ys  in  his  class, 
an'  I  think  he'll  end  as  a  champeen  pug." 

He  went  out,  still  smiling,  and,  as  he  did  so,  Violet 
saw  Rose,  after  stooping  hurriedly,  place  in  his  hands 
a  yellow  bill.  As  the  door  closed,  there  came  into 
the  younger  woman's  eyes  the  question  that  she  would 
not  have  dared  to  ask. 

"  Yep,"  nodded  Rose,  "  that's  my  week's  pay  for 
what  they  call  protection." 

"Isn't  he  afraid  to  take  it?"  Violet,  thus  en 
couraged,  inquired. 

"  The  man  above  him  isn't  afraid  to  take  two- 
thirds  of  it,"  said  Rose,  "  an'  the  best  of  it  goes  past 
him  to  the  district  boss — it's  the  regular  system  with 
the  regular  prices.  Oh,  no,  he  ain't  afraid;  an'  if 
you  ever  tried  to  live  on  a  copper's  pay,  you'd  soon 
be  afraid  not  to  take  it." 

Violet,  returning  to  the  parlor,  bit  her  lip:  there 
was  indeed  small  help  to  be  had  from  the  law. 

Small  help,  either  there  or  elsewhere.  She  turned, 
naturally,  only  to  the  seemingly  more  prosperous  cus 
tomers,  but,  even  by  them,  she  was  met  with  smiling 
incredulity :  her  story  was  so  hackneyed  that  it  could 
not  be  true. 

"  It's  all  right  enough  to  want  to  get  out  of  here," 
said  her  sagest  adviser,  who  at  least  paid  her  the  rare 
compliment  of  credence;  "  but  how  are  you  going  to 
live  after  you  get  out?  You  can't  go  home;  you 
haven't  got  any  trade;  you  can't  cook;  without  a  rec 
ommendation  you  can't  get  even  a  job  at  general 
housework  or  in  a  factory." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  77 

He  was  a  quiet,  middle-aged  widower  that  said 
this,  an  infrequent  visitor,  a  chief  clerk  in  one  of 
the  departments  of  a  large  insurance  company,  with 
a  reputation  for  liberal  kindliness  at  Rose's  and,  in 
his  own  little  world,  a  position  of  some  influence. 

"  You  get  me  out,"  said  Violet,  "  an'  I'll  do  the 
rest." 

But  here  again  the  gate  was  barred  against  her. 
The  clerk  was  burdened  with  a  good  name  and  a 
place  of  trust.  He  could  risk  neither  the  one  nor 
the  other.  He  was  sorry,  genuinely  sorry — she  saw 
that;  but  what  could  he  do? 

It  was  an  evening  or  two  later  that  she  found  her 
first  pale  ray  of  encouragement,  and  she  found  it  in 
the  person  of  Philip  Beekman,  that  same  young  Beek- 
man  to  whom  Fritzie  had  casually  referred. 

Beekman  described  himself,  with  some  accuracy, 
as  a  person  of  good  family  and  bad  morals.  "  We 
are  getting  so  confounded  poor,"  he  used  to  say, 
"that  I  sometimes  doubt  the  former;  but  I  have 
constant  visible  evidence  of  the  latter,  and  so  I  cling 
to  that  as  the  one  sure  thing  in  this  uncertain  life." 
Had  he  but  seen  the  facts,  he  might  well  have  con 
sidered  his  derelictions  as  the  result  of  his  parentage. 
At  her  divorce,  his  mother  had  been  awarded  the 
custody  of  her  only  child,  and,  now  that  she  had  re 
married,  Philip  was  forced  to  play  that  neither  un 
common  nor  congenial  role — the  part  of  the  young 
man  with  too  little  training  to  earn  a  living  and  too 
much  ancestry  to  marry  one. 

"  After  all,"  he  said,  as  he  sat  with  Violet  in  the 
many-colored  back  parlor,  a  half-empty  bottle  be 
tween  them,  his  usually  pale  face  aglow,  his  gray 


7 8  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

eyes  filmy,  and  his  black  hair  tumbled  by  the  constant 
passage  through  it  of  his  long,  nervous  fingers — 
"  after  all,  you  see,  you  and  I  are  in  the  same  boat. 
You  can't  get  out  because,  if  you  do,  the  sharks  will 
eat  you,  and  I  daren't  get  out  because  I  can't 


swim." 


Always  haunted  by  the  fear  that,  in  some  manner, 
her  true  story  might  reach  her  own  town  and  her 
own  people,  Violet  had  told  him  only  as  much  as  she 
dared,  and  what  she  had  said  had  moved  his  im 
pulsive  generosity. 

"  But  anyway,"  he  insisted,  "  you  can  do  one  thing 
that  I  can't." 

She  clutched  at  the  straw. 

"What's  that?"  she  asked. 

"  You  can  get  help  from  shore." 

"  How  do  you  mean?  " 

"  I  mean  that  if  you'll  write  a  letter  home,  I'll 
mail  it." 

She  shook  her  head:  the  straw  crumpled  in  her 
fingers. 

"  There's  no  use  of  that,"  she  said. 

"  Of  course  there  is.  After  all,  your  father's  your 
father,  you  see,  and  I  don't  know  a  father  that 
wouldn't  help  his  daughter  out  of  the  sort  of  mess 
you've  got  into." 

"  I  know  one,"  said  Violet,  grimly. 

"  Not  till  you  try  him,  you  don't." 

"  Yes,  I  do.  If  you  was  in  my  place  would  your 
father- 

"  Which  father?  "  laughed  Beekman.  "  My  one 
won't  have  anything  to  do  with  me  because  I  live  with 
the  other,  and  the  other  won't  have  anything  to  do 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  79 

with  me  because  I'm  the  son  of  his  predecessor. — 
You  take  my  advice  and  write  home." 

"  I'd  never  get  an  answer." 

She  spoke  in  an  even  tone,  but  there  was  no  mis 
taking  the  tragedy  that  underlay  it. 

Beekman  looked  at  her  and  blinked  queerly.  Pie 
brought  his  fist  down  smartly  among  the  jangling 
glasses. 

"  It's  a  rotten  shame !  "  he  said.  "  A  dirty,  rotten 
shame !  Why,  don't  you  know  that  that  yid  who 
got  you  into  this  makes  a  business  of  such  things? 
Don't  you  know  there's  a  whole  army  of  them  that 
do?  I  wish  to  the  Lord  I  could  do  something,  but 
there  isn't  a  policeman  or  a  magistrate  in  the  city 
who'd  listen  to  me — they  know  too  well  where  they 
get  the  jam  for  their  bread  and  butter — and  I  can't 
get  a  job  for  even  myself,  let  alone  you !  " 

She  had  not,  however,  heard  his  last  sentence. 
Her  blue  eyes  wide,  she  was  hanging  on  his  reference 
to  Max. 

"  A  business?  "  she  repeated.  "  Do  you  mean  that 
men  make  money — that  way?  " 

"  Of  course  I  do."  The  film  passed  suddenly  from 
Beekman's  eyes,  leaving  them  alert  with  purpose. 
"  Look  here,"  he  said,  "  there  is  one  thing  I  can  do, 
and  I  don't  know  anything  that  I'd  enjoy  more:  you 
give  me  that  little  kyke's  name,  and  I'll  push  his 
face  out  of  the  back  of  his  head!  " 

Then  there  happened  a  strange  thing.  She  had 
long  guessed  and  now  she  knew,  but  guessing  or 
knowing,  she  would  not  believe.  As  much  for  her 
own  sanity  as  for  Max's  safety,  she  lied. 

"  The  name  he  gave  me,"  she  said,  "  wasn't  his 


8o  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

right  one.  It  wasn't  even  one  he  mostly  used.  And 
I  never  knew  no  other." 

Beekman  raised  his  hands  in  more  than  mock 
despair,  and  got  up  to  go. 

"  Well,"  he  declared,  "  I  don't  know  what  I  can 
do  for  you.  If  I  got  into  any  scandal,  it  would  punch 
the  last  hole  in  my  meal-ticket." 

Violet,  who  was  becoming  accustomed  to  such  re 
plies,  smiled  kindly. 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  get  into  no  trouble  for  me," 
she  said. 

"  I  know  you  don't,  and  I  couldn't  be  any  use  if 
I  did.  But  I'll  promise  you  this:  I'll  keep  my  eyes 
open,  and  if  anything  does  turn  up,  I'll  be  Johnny- 
on-the-spot,  all  right." 

"  Thank  you,"  said  Violet. 

"  And  look  here,"  pursued  Beekman,  "  I  know 
that  it's  all  rot  to  expect  you  to  walk  out  of  here  with 
out  friends  or  a  job;  I  know  that,  unless  you've  got 
one  or  the  other,  you're  just  simply  in  jail  here;  but 
if  I  can't  get  you  anything,  there  must  be  those  who 
can.  Why  don't  you  talk  to  the  coal-men,  or  the 
gas-inspectors,  or — I  tell  you,  I've  seen  that  tow- 
headed  Dutchman  who  leaves  the  beer  here.  He 
looks  straight,  and  he  stops  at  the  door.  Why  don't 
you  talk  to  him?  He's  the  sort  that  would  know 
of  a  job  for — for " 

Beekman  hesitated,  blushing  like  a  schoolboy. 

"  For  my  sort?  "  asked  Violet  "  Maybe  he  is. 
Thank  you.  Anyhow  I'll  see." 

And  she  did  see.  When  Beekman  left  her,  press 
ing  into  her  hand  the  last  piece  of  money  that  he 
would  have  for  a  week,  he  gave  her  at  the  same  time 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  81 

so  much  of  hope.  Those  who  seemed  rich  could  not 
help  her;  she  would  appeal  to  those  who  were  poor. 

She  was  up  early  and  in  the  kitchen  the  next  morn 
ing  at  the  hour  when  she  knew  the  brewery-wagon 
would  stop  outside,  and  she  sent  the  ebon  Cassie  on 
an  errand  to  the  corner  pharmacy.  The  maid  had 
scarcely  closed  the  door  before  Violet  was  summoned 
to  open  it  to  the  German  of  whom  Beekman  had 
spoken. 

Philip  had  observed  well.  The  brewery's  driver, 
who  stood  whistling  in  the  areaway,  was  a  short, 
stocky  man  with  the  neck  and  arms  of  a  gladiator 
and  the  round,  smiling  face  of  a  child.  His  blue 
overalls  and  dark  cloth  cap  accentuated  the  fairness 
of  his  hair,  and  his  round  inquiring  eyes  were  alive 
with  continual  good-humor.  He  had  just  piled  a 
half-dozen  cases  of  beer  beside  the  doorway. 

Violet,  in  her  crimson  kimona,  took  from  the  table 
the  money  that  had  been  left  for  him. 

"  Good-morning,"  she  said  as  she  handed  him  the 
bills. 

He  accepted  the  money  with  his  left  hand  and, 
with  his  right,  raised  his  cap  from  his  clustering 
curls.  His  lips  ceased  whistling,  half  regretfully. 

"  Goot-mornin',"  he  replied,  smiling. 

"Won't  you  come  in  and  have  a  drink?"  asked 
Violet,  adopting  Rose's  form  of  salutation. 

"  No,  t'ank  you,"  the  German  shook  his  head.  "  I 
neffer  trinks  nussing  bud  beer." 

"  Well,"  said  Violet,  "  we  have  lots  of  that  now." 

"  Und  I  neffer  trink  dot  till  tinner." 

There  was  an  awkward  pause.  The  German,  not 
knowing  how  to  leave  without  seeming  rudeness,  was 


82  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

shifting  his  weight  from  one  heavily  shod  foot  to 
the  other.  The  woman,  uncertain  how  to  say  the 
words  she  wanted  to  say,  remained  with  her  hand 
upon  the  knob. 

"  You  don't?  "  she  awkwardly  repeated. 

"  No,  und  so  I  t'ink — I  t'ink  I  besser  be  goin'," 
he  hurriedly  concluded,  and  began  to  turn  on  his 
heel. 

The  necessity  for  quick  action  roused  her. 

"  Wait,"  she  said.  And  then,  as  he  faced  her 
again  in  mute  wonder,  she  pressed  another  bill  into 
his  hand.  "  I  want  you  to  help  me,"  she  continued. 
"  I  want  to  get  a  job  somewhere,  and  I  don't  want 
Miss  Rose  to  know  nothing  about  it." 

He  looked  from  the  bill  to  her,  still  wondering. 

11  So-o?  "  he  responded. 

'  Yes,  I  want  work — some  other  kind  of  work — 
and  I  thought  perhaps  you  might  " — her  voice  fal 
tered — "  might  know  of  some  kind." 

The  German's  mobile  face  underwent  a  quick 
change.  First  astonishment  and  then  something  not 
far  removed  from  tears  came  into  his  childlike  eyes. 
He  crushed  the  bill  in  his  big  red  fist. 

"  So-o  ?  "  he  repeated. 

'  Yes,  I — you  understand  that  I  must  have  friends 
or  a  job  if  I  am  to  get  away  from  here,  and  I  thought 
you  might  know  of  something." 

The  German  bobbed  his  curls. 

"I  know  dot  right  veil,"  he  said;  "bud  I  don' 
know  no  tshob  chust  now." 

Violet's  face  darkened. 

"  All  right,"  she  answered,  "  I  only  hoped  may- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  83 

"  Look  here,  miss,"  the  driver  cut  in  with  a  note 
of  ready  feeling  in  his  voice.  "  You  mean  all  dot?  " 

"All  what?" 

"  About  geddin'  ozzer — aboud  a  real  tshob." 

"  If  I  had  the  clothes  and  a  place  I'd  go  this 
minute." 

"Veil,  den,  listen.  I've  chust  god  a  new  blace; 
I'm  goin'  to  be  bar-tender  ofer  on  Segond  Avenue, 
bud  I  gan  send  back  here  if  I  hear  anysing. — Your 
name?  " 

"  Violet— just  Miss  Violet." 

"  All  righd,  Miss  Violet,  I  know  some  more  aboud 
dese  blaces  like  dis  dan  you  maybe  t'ink,  und  I  guess 
maybe  I  gan  do  somesing.  Nex'  Sunday  I  dake  my 
girl  to  Coney,  und  den  ve'll  dalk  sings  ofer  und  ve'll 
see  vhat  Katie  says." 

In  spite  of  the  promised  delay  and  the  growing 
habit  of  doubt,  Violet's  face  kindled. 

"  You're  good,"  she  said  simply,  "  and  I'll  trust 
you." 

"  Oh,  I  make  missing,"  replied  the  German,  smil 
ing  once  more,  "bud  chust  you  vait:  Katie  gan  fix 
it;  she  gan  fix  anysing." 

Before  Violet  could  reply,  he  had  resumed  his 
whistling  and  run  down  the  alleyway;  and  she  saw 
that  he  had  tossed  back  her  money  on  the  topmost 
beercase. 


VII 

HOLIDAY 

THAT  Sunday  morning  in  his  single,  dark,  nar 
row  room,  Hermann  Hoffmann,  the  erstwhile 
driver  of  a  brewery-wagon  and  the  coming 
Second  Avenue  barkeeper,  arose  with  the  dawn,  just 
as  if  it  had  been  a  workday  morning,  and  set  about 
his  elaborate  toilet,  whistling. 

To  the  casual  eye  there  would  have  seemed  little  in 
his  surroundings  to  inspire  any  lyric  joy.  The  cell- 
like  apartment,  which  was  the  only  spot  on  earth 
that  Hermann  might  call  his  home,  was  a  back  room 
on  the  top  floor  of  a  damp  and  gloomy  tenement 
in  a  filthy  court  running  off  Houston  Street  near 
Avenue  A.  Only  at  noon  did  the  pale  sunlight  strain 
into  that  court,  crowded  all  morning  with  malarious 
dogs  and  dirty,  toddling  babies  solemnly,  but  vainly, 
trying  to  learn  how  to  play,  and  echoing  all  through 
the  black  night  now  to  the  curses  of  scarred,  slinking 
tiger-cats,  now  to  the  staggering  footsteps  or  the 
brawling  oaths  of  drunkards  reeling  homeward 
through  the  evil-smelling  darkness,  and  again  to  the 
piercing  cry  of  a  woman  in  mortal  agony  or  mortal 
fear. 

Robbins's  Row  was  no  place  for  a  policeman  after 
nightfall,  and  scarcely  a  safer  place  for  a  stranger 
by  day.  From  its  sagging  file  of  dirty,  paper-patched 
windows,  more  or  less  feminine  shapes  leaned  out, 

b 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  85 

calling  gossip  to  their  neighbors,  and  hauling  at  the 
pullied  ropes  that,  crossing  the  street,  spread  above 
the  pedestrians  a  tossing,  parti-colored  canopy  of 
"  wash."  You  entered  it  by  climbing  three  rotting 
wooden  steps,  by  stumbling  through  a  wet  hall,  where 
a  blue-burning  gas-jet  accentuated  the  sense  of  per 
petual  midnight,  and  you  could  reach  the  room  of 
Hermann  Hoffmann  only  by  a  perilous  climb  of  six 
flights  of  stairs. 

That  room  was  as  bare  as  any  in  the  building.  It 
looked  out,  by  a  single  slit  in  the  wall,  upon  a  light- 
shaft,  strangely  misnamed.  Its  only  furniture  was  a 
cot,  a  wooden-seated  chair,  a  washstand,  and,  bearing 
comb  and  brushes  and  shaving-utensils,  one  of  those 
pine  bureaus  the  drawers  of  which  may  be  opened 
in  ten  minutes,  and  closed,  if  you  are  lucky,  in  fifteen. 
Yet  the  note  of  the  place  was  the  note  of  order  and 
of  neatness;  the  bare  floor  was  clean,  and,  against  the 
fresh  and  brightly  papered  wall,  there  hung  here  a 
calico  curtain  that  hid  the  tenant's  wardrobe  and  there 
a  single  shelf  bearing  only,  as  if  it  were  an  altar 
consecrated  to  one  holy  object,  a  thumbed  and  dog's- 
eared  copy  of  "  Das  Kapital." 

Hermann  plunged  his  ruddy  face,  whistling,  into  a 
bowl  of  water  and  drew  it  out,  more  ruddy  and 
whistling  still.  Even  the  author  of  that  portentous 
volume  on  the  book-shelf  used  to  sing  "  Strausbourg," 
and  Hermann's  single  anthem  was  "  Die  Wacht  Am 
Rhein." 

Still  pursuing  that  inspiring  music,  he  turned  to  the 
bureau  and  began  to  shave  the  yellow  down  from 
his  cheeks  and  chin.  Thrust  between  the  exaggerat 
ing  mirror  and  its  frame  were  two  photographs — 


86  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

the  one,  a  trifle  faded,  of  a  matronly,  kindly  woman 
of  his  own  race,  perhaps  fifty  years  old,  stiffly  arrayed 
in  a  silk  dress  rigorously  American,  and  the  other, 
a  new  one,  that  of  a  young  girl  in  a  great  hat  and 
unmistakably  Manhattan  dress,  a  young  girl  with 
a  pretty,  piquant  face  of  that  distinctively  American 
type — the  Irish.  Perhaps  these  photographs  dis 
tracted  the  German's  attention;  perhaps  it  was  only 
that  no  man  living  can  successfully  whistle  and  shave 
at  one  and  the  same  time.  At  any  rate,  his  hand 
shook,  and  the  razor  cut  a  light  gash  in  his  upper 
lip. 

He  flung  the  offending  blade  from  him,  and  it 
struck  the  mirror,  cracking  the  glass  across  one  cor 
ner. 

"  Ach,  Gott,"  he  smiled,  as  he  staunched  the  blood 
with  a  heavy  pressure  through  a  rough  towel;  and 
then,  in  the  English  that  he  used  even  in  his  solilo 
quies  :  "  Dey  say  now  dot  means  bad  luck  fer  seven 
year.  Lucky  is't  dot  I  am  not  suberstitious !  " 

And  then,  undisturbed,  he  quietly  resumed  his 
whistling,  finished  shaving,  sleeked  down  his  rebel 
lious  tow-colored  curls,  got  into  a  newly  pressed 
brown  suit  and  yellow  shirt,  donned  a  high  collar 
and  salmon  tie,  and,  setting  a  carefully  brushed  derby 
upon  his  head,  descended  to  the  narrow  street,  the 
strains  of  "  Die  Wacht  Am  Rhein  "  lingering  be 
hind  him  through  the  darkened  hallway. 

To  accomplish  the  purpose  of  his  early  rising,  he 
took  the  Third  Avenue  elevated  to  the  Forty-second 
Street  station.  There  he  bought  two  bouquets  of 
carnations — one  pink  and  the  other  white — and 
boarded  a  suburban  train,  which  bore  him,  at  last, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  87 

to  one  of  those  little  stations  that  New  York,  which 
has  so  small  time  for  remembrance,  has  selected  for 
the  hiding  of  its  dead. 

In  the  warm  sunlight  of  the  spring  morning,  Her 
mann  picked  his  certain  way  among  the  green  grass 
and  the  white-roofed  habitations  of  the  sleepers,  until 
he  came  upon  a  little  plot,  by  no  means  the  cheapest 
or  more  obscure  in  the  burying-ground,  and  there, 
his  lips  still  pursed,  but  silent  now,  took  off  his  shin 
ing  derby  and  paused  before  the  solitary  white  stone. 
With  much  that  was  unaffectedly  reverent,  he  knelt, 
according  to  his  weekly  custom,  and  placed  the  white 
carnations  on  the  grave,  and  with  a  great  deal  that 
was  just  as  unaffectedly  proud,  he  read,  also  accord 
ing  to  that  custom,  the  inscription  cut  upon  the  white 
stone  that  he  had  purchased  with  what,  when  he 
paid  the  bill,  happened  to  be  his  last  dollar: 

Here  In  Peace 
Lies  The  Body  Of 

WlLHELMINA    HOFFMANN, 

Widow  Of  Ludwig  Hoffmann, 

Of  Andernach,  Rhenish  Prussia, 

Who  Dep't'd  This  Life,  Jan.   10,  1907. 


"  Wait  thou,  wait  thou  ;  soon  thou  shalt  rest  also." 

The  inscription  was  in  English,  but  when  he  had 
finished  reading  it,  the  dead  woman's  son  said,  under 
his  breath,  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  the  language  of 
Luther,  as  she  had  taught  it  him. 

"  She  liked  me  to  pray,"  he  shamefacedly  ex 
plained  to  the  circumambient  atmosphere,  as  if  prayer 
in  any  tongue  were  a  compromise  with  his  principles. 
"  Und  vhile  I'm  aboud  it,  I  mighd  as  veil  use  de 


88  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

old  langwage.  If  the  Herr  Gott  listens  at  all,  He'd 
hear  it  some  besser  in  de  vay  She  said  it." 

And  then  he  resumed  his  hat  and  his  anthem,  and 
returned  to  town. 

Katie  Flanagan  was  waiting  for  him  as  he  came 
hurrying  up  the  steps  from  the  subway  at  Park 
Place — the  piquant,  pretty  girl  of  the  photograph, 
in  black,  because  her  parents  had  died  not  long  since, 
but  in  black  just  as  elaborate  as  her  slender  purse 
would  permit,  because  she  knew  the  full  value  of  her 
raven  hair  and  blossoming  cheeks  and  tender  eyes  of 
Irish  blue. 

"  Ach,"  gasped  Hermann,  "  hof  I  kep'  you  a  long 
time  vaitin'?  " 

"  Only  about  as  long  as  you  mostly  do,"  she  an 
swered.  Her  voice  was  like  her  eyes,  and  she  spoke 
with  but  the  charming  hint  of  a  Galway  brogue. 

The  German's  cheeks  burned  with  humiliation. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  he  apologized.  "  I  god  up  early  to 
be  on  dime,  bud  de  train  vas  lade  from  the  cem't'ry 
in." 

She  understood  and  smiled. 

"  It's  only  five  minutes  I've  been  here,"  she  con 
fessed. 

"  Und  I  brought  you  a  few  bosies,  Katie.  I 
d' ought  maybe " 

"  Oh !  "  she  seized  the  carnations  with  a  laugh 
of  delight,  and  buried  her  nose  in  them.  "  It's  good 
y'are  to  think  of  such  things,  Hermann — and  a  bad 
lad  that  y'are  to  spend  the  money  so!  " 

They  were  making  their  way  toward  the  Bridge, 
the  sturdy  Hoffmann  shouldering  a  passage  through 
the  momentarily  swelling  Sunday  morning  crowd. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  89 

"  Dot  liddle  makes  nussing,"  he  proudly  pro 
tested.  "  To-morrow  I  begin  ad  my  new  tshob." 

"  But  that,"  said  Katie,  "  won't  pay  you  hardly 
wan  dollar  a  week  more'n  the  brewery  did.  I  dunno, 
but  I  think " 

There,  however,  her  protest,  for  the  moment, 
ended.  They  were  caught,  clinging  together,  in  the 
whirlpool  of  the  entrance;  carried  nearly  off  their 
feet,  rushed  by  the  ticket-window  with  a  quick  ex 
change  of  small  coin,  and,  a  few  minutes  later,  were 
battling  their  way  among  the  press  into  a  waiting 
Coney  Island  train. 

In  the  last  charge,  Hermann,  his  lips  puckered  in 
the  battle-hymn,  did  heroic  service.  While  Katie 
hung  tightly  to  one  arm,  he  used  manfully  the  elbow 
of  the  other;  pushed  a  guard  to  the  right;  shoved 
two  cigarette-smoking  youths  to  the  left;  wriggled 
through  the  already  crowded  platform  and  shot  into 
one  of  the  coveted  "  cross-seats."  Much  of  the  park 
would  not  be  open  for  a  month  or  more  to  come, 
but  New  York  was  already  clamoring  for  its  play 
ground. 

Katie,  flushed  and  triumphant,  sank  beside  him, 
and  busied  herself  with  the  task  of  straightening  her 
big  black  hat.  Hermann  watched  her  in  frank  ad 
miration  as  she  sat  there,  her  arms  raised  to  her 
head,  in  that  pose  which,  of  all  others,  is  the  most 
becoming  to  her  sex. 

"  What  are  you  lookin'  at?  "  she  archly  wondered, 
casting  a  smiling,  sidelong,  blue  glance  at  him. 

But  before  her  the  strong  man  was  a  timid  child. 

"  Ad  de  brettiest  bicture  in  a  whole  vorld,"  he 
stammered. 


90  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Katie  laughed  again. 

"  Och,"  she  said  in  gratified  disapproval,  "  there 
sure  must  be  a  Castle  Blarney  somewhere  on  the 
Rhine.  What  favor  are  you  wantin'  to  ask  me  now, 
I  wonder." 

Once  he  had  started,  Hermann  was  too  dogged 
thus  to  be  retarded. 

"  It's  chust  de  same  old  fafor,"  he  pleaded,  as, 
with  a  great  creaking  of  brakes,  the  train  began  to 
swing  upon  the  Bridge.  "  Now  I  god  my  new  tshob, 
Katie,  there  gan't  for  nod  hafin'  our  veddin'  be  no 
good  reason,  gan  dere?  " 

"  There's  one,"  she  said,  still  delighting  in  her 
coquetry;  "there's  one  reason." 

"Vat  is  't?" 

"  Its  name  is  Father  Kelly." 

"  Katie,  you  von't  led  dot  gount!  " 

"  I  will  so." 

"  Und  I  haf  to  gome  into  your  church,  und — und 
alldemd'ings?" 

"  You  do  that." 

Hermann  squirmed;  but  he  knew  of  old  that  from 
this  point  she  was  neither  to  be  persuaded  nor  driven. 
It  was  a  discussion  that  they  had  held  many  a  time 
before,  and  every  time  she  would  give  him  no 
answer  to  his  suit  until  he  should  surrender  in 
this  particular.  Now,  however,  he  considered  him 
self  about  to  set  foot  upon  the  highroad  to  pros 
perity,  and  the  prosperous  can  ill  afford  to  skimp 
magnanimity. 

"  All  righd,"  he  at  last  somewhat  ruefully  con 
ceded,  though  with  certain  mental  reservations  into 
which  it  seemed  then  unnecessary  to  enter:  "I'm  a 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  91 

strong  von,  und  hof  stood  a  lot  a'ready,  so  I  t'ink 
I  gan  stand  dot  too.  I'll  do  it." 

He  took  her  by  surprise. 

"  Promise?  "  she  asked. 

"  Sure  I  bromise." 

"  No  backin'  out  whatever  happens?  " 

"  No  packin'  oud." 

"  Well,  God  bless  you  then." 

There  was  a  catch  in  her  voice  as  she  said  it. 
Into  her  lonely,  hardworking  life,  this  strong,  soft 
hearted,  poor  and  cheerful  German  had  brought 
about  all  the  sunshine  that  she  had  latterly  known, 
and  she  could  think  of  nothing  better  than  to  give 
him  the  answer  that  he  was  so  honestly  anxious  to 
hear.  But,  though  he  had  become  more  and  more 
to  her  from  the  first  evening  when  he  had  seized  her 
as  she  was  falling  from  the  platform  of  a  surface- 
car  that  had  started  too  quickly  on  its  way,  she  had 
seen  enough  of  the  warfare  with  poverty  in  her  own 
family  to  resolve  that  she  would  not  marry  until  she 
could  contribute  her  share  to  the  wages  of  the  result 
ing  household,  and  now  she  had  neither  a  position 
nor  the  immediate  likelihood  of  obtaining  one.  It 
was  hard,  but  she  was  used  to  hardship,  and  so,  be 
cause  she  must  not  cry,  she  smiled. 

Hermann  tried  to  grasp  her  hand,  but  she  easily 
eluded  him. 

"Den,  vhen  do  ve  say?"  he  eagerly  demanded. 

Much  as  it  hurt  her  to  hurt  him,  she  laughed  her 
answer : 

"  As  soon  as  I  get  me  fingers  on  a  job  that'll  pay 
me  six  dollars  a  week,  we'll  have  Father  Kelly  say 
the  words  for  us." 


92  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  But  Katie  "—he  used  to  say  "  Gatie  "  until  she 
had  teased  him  out  of  it — "  you  don'  mean  dot ! 
You  said — you  dold  me — you  bromise " 

He  floundered  in  the  breakers  of  amazement.  She 
turned  her  face  away,  and  looked  out  of  the  window 
at  the  gigantic  mockery  of  Liberty  in  the  harbor; 
but  she  could  not  find  it  in  her  heart  long  to  remain 
silent.  She  faced  him  once  more. 

"  It's  no  use,  Hermann,"  she  said,  her  eyes  very 
big  and  serious.  "  Here  y'are  goin'  to  Schleger's 
place  with  your  first  good  chance  at  a  way  as'll  lead 
you  to  somethin'  worth  workin'  for — you  said  your 
self  it  might  end  in  a  cafe  o'  your  own — an'  to  get 
there  you'll  be  needin'  every  blessed  cent  you  can 
save.  Do  you  think  now  I  could  look  at  meself  in 
the  glass  mornin's  if  I  married  you  an'  kep'  you 
down?  No,  thank  God,  I'm  not  so  bad  as  that." 

He  sputtered  toward  a  protest,  but  she  waved  him 
down. 

"  Now  don't  be  tellin'  me  that  two  can  live  as 
cheap  as  one,"  she  said.  "  I  seen  that  pleasant  lie 
nailed  this  many  a  year,  an'  I  know  more  about  house- 
keepin'  in  five  minutes  than  you  can  learn  in  a  life 
time.  Things  was  plenty  bad  five  years  past,  an' 
now  they're  worse  yet.  What  rent  is  you  know,  an' 
what  clothes  is  you  can't  even  guess.  Here's  beef 
steak  at  twenty-two  cents  the  pound;  veal  up  to 
thirty  an'  still  goin'  up.  The  papers  make  a  fuss 
an'  get  the  prices  down  three  cents  for  three  days, 
an'  then  the  dealers  put  them  up  again  when  none's 
lookin'.  An'  as  for  eggs,  you  can  pay  seventy-five 
cents  a  dozen  for  them,  winters,  with  the  hour  an' 
minute  of  the  layin'  stamped  on  them,  if  you're  a 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  93 

millionaire,  or  you  can  get  nine  for  a  quarter  if  you 
hold  your  nose." 

The  hopeful  Hermann  shook  his  blonde  head. 

"  But  Katie,"  he  said,  "  I  don'  gare  if  I  neffer 
ged  a  gafe  off  my  own.  I  don'  vant  a  gafe:  I  vant 
you." 

She  smiled  again. 

"  You  flatter  me  by  the  choice,"  she  said;  "  but  if 
we  can  get  along  without  the  drink,  we  can't  get 
along  without  a  bite  to  eat  now  an'  then.  No, 
Hermann-boy,  it's  no  use,  I'm  tellin'  you.  I  seen 
it  tried.  Me  father  swang  a  pick  and  me  mother 
took  in  washin' — when  she  could  get  it — an'  even 
then  it  wouldn't  work:  the  one  would  have  starved 
to  death  if  the  third  rail  hadn't  got  him,  an'  poor 
mother  killed  herself  tryin'  to  keep  her  an'  me.  It 
won't  work,  an'  I  know  it." 

While  the  train  hurried  above  the  dead  level  of 
Brooklyn  houses,  out  through  the  suburban  mon 
strosities  and  across  the  dunes,  the  optimist,  still  an 
optimist,  renewed  his  endeavors  to  find  the  chance 
for  lodging  his  own  arguments;  but  all  the  while 
Katie  continued  to  overwhelm  him  with  a  flow  of 
errors.  They  had  almost  reached  the  sandy  island 
before  Hermann,  still  stubbornly  hopeful,  elected  to 
drop  the  subject  for  the  present,  and  took  up,  in  its 
stead,  the  story  of  Violet. 

He  spoke  simply,  which  is  to  say  forcibly,  and  he 
had  an  understanding,  and  therefore  sympathetic, 
audience.  Katie's  face  immediately  softened. 

"The  poor  child!  "  she  murmured.  "An'  don't 
I  know  what  it  is?  I've  seen  them  go  under,  here 
one  an'  there  another,  hungry  or  overworked,  every 


94  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

mother's  daughter  of  them.  There  was  Molly  Ryan, 
as  good  a  girl  as  you'd  find  in  a  day's  search  of  the 
parish,  left  alone  with  no  one  to  put  clothes  on  her 
back;  an'  pretty  Agnes  Donovan — out  of  work  for 
four  months — her  as  died  in  the  City  Hospital;  an' 
Giulia  Fortuni,  whose  father  kept  a  fruit-stand  by 
the  Grand  Street  "  L  "  station. — What  can  we  do 
for  her,  Hermann-boy?  " 

"  Dot's  vat  I  vanted  to  ask  you,  Katie,"  said  Hoff 
mann.  "  She  has  to  hof  friends  und  vork  first  of 
all." 

"  Friends  she  has  right  here;  but  work  she  must 
have  whether  or  no.  I  begin  me  old  search  for  me- 
self  in  the  mornin',  an'  I'll  keep  eye  an'  mouth  ready 
to  get  a  job  for  her." 

Cynically  hopeless  and  city-wise  in  regard  to  her 
own  chances,  Katie's  Celtic  soul  warmed  to  some 
thing  of  Hermann's  optimism  in  the  cause  of  a  sister. 
She  began  planning  at  once,  and  when  the  train 
drew  up  outside  the  tunnel-shed,  she  had  the  absent 
Violet  established  as  a  cloak-model  in  the  big  Lennox 
Department-Store,  and  engaged  to  marry  a  floor 
walker. 

And  then  Coney — Coney  the  sweetly  reasonable  in 
price  and  the  extravagantly  generous  in  provision — 
crowded  out  of  her  mind,  for  that  day,  all  thoughts 
save  the  thought  of  itself. 

A  great  many  years  ago — oh,  a  very  great  many 
years  ago ! — when  you  were  a  little  boy,  your  father 
took  you  to  the  county-fair.  You  remember  it,  even 
yet,  as  a  purple  day  in  the  glad  calendar  of  your 
childhood:  the  blood  cattle,  the  show  of  farm 
implements,  the  prize  pumpkins,  the  side-shows  with 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  95 

their  fat  ladies  and  skeleton  gentlemen,  and  the  suave 
individual  that  put  a  bean  under  a  cup  and  then, 
for  a  dollar,  showed  your  shrewd  parent  that  it 
was  under  another.  But  above  all  you  remember  the 
crowd.  Never  before  had  you  seen  so  many  people 
in  one  place,  never  realized  that  there  were  so  many 
people  in  the  world;  and  even  now,  out  of  the  past, 
you  can  hear  an  awed  voice  saying: 

"  There  are  five  thousand  persons  here." 

Well,  back  home,  the  county-fair,  thank  heaven, 
continues  to  grow.  Cattle  are  sleeker  and  pumpkins 
larger;  the  fat  ladies  weigh  more  and  the  thin  gentle 
men  less;  the  shell-game,  in  one  form  or  another, 
aids  the  progress  of  agriculture  by  making  five  dol 
lars  grow  where  only  one  grew  before.  But,  in  the 
meantime,  the  ugly,  delightful  "  amusement-park  " 
has  brought  the  county-fair  to  the  city-limit,  and 
nearly  three  hundred  thousand  persons  go  to  Coney 
Island  every  day. 

Early  in  the  season  though  they  were,  Katie  and 
Hermann  no  sooner  stepped  upon  that  Surf  Avenue 
which  is  at  once  the  heart  and  the  aorta  of  the  Island, 
than  they  felt,  as  there  they  always  felt,  that  they 
had  entered  upon  the  Land  of  Carnival.  The  broad, 
but  crowded,  way  was  dancing  with  the  noise  of 
festival,  with  the  clangor  of  brass  bands,  the  cries 
of  venders,  the  smell  of  the  circus,  the  tang  of  the 
sea. 

Here,  from  mixed  drinks  to  mixed  music,  went  not 
the  thugs  and  blacklegs,  the  pallid  men  and  the 
painted  women  that  would  have  filled  such  a  place 
had  it  been  within  the  borough  of  Manhattan.  In 
their  stead  here  drove  the  cars  of  generally  stolid 


96  THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

people  of  business  and  leisure,  and  here,  above  all, 
walked  the  workers  of  the  city,  the  weaker  sex  and 
the  stronger,  seeking  holiday.  The  full-portion  hat 
on  the  half-portion  girl  is  as  familiar  to  Surf  Avenue 
as  to  the  Waldorf  palm-room;  care  is  erased  from 
the  tablets  of  memory.  On  Coney  there  is  no  To 
morrow. 

The  laughter  of  the  hundreds  of  children  rang 
out  no  more  freely  than  did  that  of  the  thousands 
of  their  elders.  Mothers  with  babies  in  their  arms 
were  young  again.  Stately  blondes  and  languorous 
brunettes,  gracefully  seated  on  the  wooden  steeds  of 
the  score  of  merry-go-rounds,  rode  with  a  dignity 
unsurpassed  in  Hyde  Park  or  the  Bois,  and  never 
a  cowboy  at  a  round-up  was  more  adventurous  than 
the  young  East-Sider  mounting  a  hired  horse  upon 
the  Pony  Track. 

Every  nook  had  something  to  sell,  and  Katie  had 
her  day's  work  in  keeping  Hermann  from  stopping 
at  each  booth.  There  were  miles  of  scenic  railways 
on  all  of  which  he  wished  to  ride;  there  were  scores 
of  panorama  that  tempted  him  with  pictures  of  every 
disaster  from  the  San  Francisco  fire  to  the  Messina 
earthquake.  There  were  the  familiar  canes  waiting 
to  be  caught  with  the  familiar  ring:  there  were  the 
familiar  chutes  to  be  shot,  and  the  familiar  "  gal 
leries  "  where  the  rattle  of  rifles  recalled  the  battle 
of  the  Yalu.  Down  on  the  beach  an  army  was  shout 
ing  in  the  surf,  and  on  every  hand  along  the  jostling, 
good-natured  street  were  peanuts  and  popcorn, 
"  crispettes  "  and  "  hot  dogs."  Upon  dozens  of  pol 
ished  floors  dancers  were  slowly  revolving  with  a 
marvelous  ability  to  distinguish  between  the  time  of 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  97 

their  own  orchestra  and  that  of  the  band  in  the  cafe 
opposite,  and  everywhere  were  picture  machines  and 
machines  that  sang. 

Cheap  it  doubtless  was,  but  cheap  also  in  the  sense 
of  small  cost.  Except  in  the  larger  cafes,  the  ordi 
nary  drinks  sold  at  only  five  cents  the  glass,  and  the 
glasses  were  not  an  insult  to  the  drinkers'  capacity. 
Hermann  and  Katie  had  their  beer  at  one  of  the 
smaller  places.  They  dined  for  twenty-five  cents 
apiece,  without  tips,  at  the  "  Home-Made-Lunch- 
Room  ";  they  were  twirled  and  buffeted  in  a  swiftly 
revolving  car  down  a  series  of  precipitous  canvas 
chasms,  paying  five  cents  apiece  for  the  privilege  of 
the  shaking-up  that,  at  home,  Hermann  would  have 
resented  with  a  blow;  and  they  chose  the  last  seat  in 
the  last  car  of  a  steep  gravity  railway,  where  a  man 
must  hold  himself  aboard  with  one  arm  and  his 
shrieking  sweetheart  aboard  with  the  other. 

It  was  all  blatant,  all  tawdry,  all  the  apotheosis 
of  the  ridiculous,  all  essentially  America-at-play;  but 
when,  at  night,  in  the  electric-train  shooting  through 
the  warm  darkness,  the  pair  returned  citywards,  it 
was  toward  their  own  hard-earned  and  with  difficulty 
retained  places  of  shelter  that  they  were  going,  like 
children  after  a  strenuous  holiday  of  make-believe 
with  school  to  begin  upon  the  morrow;  and  if,  in 
most  of  the  seats,  as  in  that  occupied  by  Katie  and 
Hermann,  girls  slept  with  their  heads  resting  frankly 
upon  sleeping  masculine  shoulders,  it  was  but  a  rest 
before  conventional  partings  at  home-doorways,  the 
play-day  ended  for  the  lonely  couch,  and  the  work 
day  soon  to  begin. 


VIII 

MR.  WESLEY  DYKER 

IN  that  company  of  the  ignoble  army  of  martyrs 
over  which  circumstances  had  given  Rose  Legere 
command,  there  were  five  members.  Besides 
Mary,  who  now  was  Violet,  Celeste,  whom  ancient 
conditions  had  temperamentally  predetermined  for 
such  service,  and  Fritzie,  who  had  chosen  a  partly 
moral  slavery  as  less  onerous  than  a  wholly  economic 
servitude,  there  was  the  highly  colored  Englishwoman 
Evelyn,  who  regarded  her  present  station  as  one  of 
the  descending  steps  inevitable  for  everyone  that  set 
foot  upon  the  way  they  all  were  treading,  and 
Wanda,  a  dark  little  Russian  Jewess,  who,  as  soon 
as  she  had  landed  at  the  South  Ferry  from  Ellis 
Island,  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  slave-traders, 
and  had  thenceforward  persistently  striven  upward  to 
the  place  she  now  inhabited. 

For  the  maintenance  of  her  authority  upon  these 
and  their  patrons,  Rose,  unlike  some  of  her  fellows, 
did  not  have  to  depend  upon  the  assistance  of  any 
man  quartered  in  the  house.  To  the  discipline  of  the 
inmates  her  system  of  charge  for  clothes,  food,  and 
shelter  was  admirably  suited;  for  the  regulation  of 
the  visitors  the  generally  nearby  person  of  big  Larry 
Riley,  the  policeman,  amply  sufficed.  One  other  out 
sider  seemed,  however,  to  have  a  regular  connection 

98 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE  99 

with  the  establishment,  and  this  person  early  excited 
Violet's  curiosity. 

Dressed  in  the  extreme  of  fashion,  as  fashion  is 
known  from  Fourteenth  Street  southward,  his  gray, 
almost  white,  suits  always  fresh  from  the  pressing- 
iron,  and  his  flowered  tie  and  ever  evident  gay  silk 
handkerchief  always  glaringly  new,  this  dapper,  dark 
young  man  was  unmistakably  Neapolitan.  His  glossy 
black  hair  clustered  tight  over  his  forehead;  his 
brown  skin  shone  as  if  rubbed  with  oil;  his  eyes 
danced  like  merry,  but  sinister,  bits  of  coal,  and  his 
too  red  lips  were  continuously,  loosely,  patterned 
to  a  smile  that  was  more  nearly  contemptuous  than 
good-humored. 

For  at  least  a  part  of  every  evening  this  Italian, 
who  always  entered  the  house  from  the  rear 
and  without  the  formality  of  knocking,  sat  in 
the  kitchen,  drinking  his  beer  with  infinite  lei 
sure  and,  in  the  intervals  of  her  discussions  in 
the  parlor,  condescended  to  talk,  lazily,  with 
Rose. 

"Who  is  he?"  asked  Violet,  on  what  was  per 
haps  the  fifth  of  his  visits  that  she  had  happened  to 
observe. 

Celeste,  to  whom  the  question  had  been  addressed, 
shrugged  her  smooth  shoulders. 

"  He  ees  Angel,"  she  answered, 

"  He  don't  look  like  one." 

"No,  not  mooch,  but  hees  name,  eet  ees  that: 
Rafael  Angelelli.  Eef  he  had  the  moostache,  he 
would  be  almost  'andsome." 

"  Rose  acts  like  she  thought  a  good  deal  of  him 
as  he  is." 


ioo         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  But  why  not?  " — Celeste  raised  her  heavy  brows. 
"  'e  ees  'er  sweed'eart." 

"He  is?"  repeated  Violet,  who  could  not  yet 
understand  the  masculine  lover  that  would  batten 
upon  his  conquest.  "  I  notice  he  pretty  nearly  lives 
here,  an'  he  never  pays  out  a  cent,  an'  never  seems 
to  work  at  anything,  an'  he  always  wears  good 
clothes." 

"  My  child,  truly !  That  is  the  reason  that  I  have 
tol'  you:  'e  ees  'er  sweed'eart." 

"  Well,  it's  queer,"  said  Violet,  remembering  an 
other  caller  to  whom,  though  he  was  a  less  frequent 
visitor,  Rose  was  equally  attentive.  "  I  don't  think 
he's  half  as  nice  as  that  fellow  who  comes  here  in 
a  taxi — the  one  that  always  wears  a  dress-suit  an' 
sits  in  the  back  parlor.  He's  a  swell." 

But  at  this  Celeste  grew  enigmatic. 

"  Oh,"  she  said,  "  that  ees  deeferent  " — and  would 
say  no  more. 

Nevertheless,  it  happened,  not  long  afterward, 
when  the  black  Cassie  was  absent  on  her  "  evening 
out,"  that  Violet,  descending  the  back  stair  in  unshod 
feet  to  steal  from  the  ice-chest — as  was  her  com 
panions'  custom — a  quiet  bottle  of  the  beer  that  she 
had  come  to  like,  was  brought  to  a  palpitating  stop 
by  the  sound,  just  then,  of  Rose's  and  Angel's  voices 
from  the  kitchen  but  a  few  steps  below  her.  The 
pair  were  plainly  engaged  in  an  important  conversa 
tion,  the  woman  hurried  and  frightened,  the  man 
cold  and  obdurate. 

"  Naw,"  said  the  Neapolitan;  "  I  maka  naw  move 
out  o'  deesa  house." 

"  But  he's  coming  in  now,  I  tell  you,"  Rose  almost 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE          101 

supplicated.  "  He'll  be  in  the  back-parlor  in  half 
a  minute,  an'  I've  got  to  go  in  an'  talk  to  him." 

"  Olla  righta;  you  go;  I  go  alonga  you." 

"You  can't  do  that;  you  know  you  can't.  You 
know  how  things  are  without  my  tellin'  you.  What 
makes  you  so  stubborn  all  of  a  sudden?  " 

"  I  don'  lika  dees  Meesta  Wesley  Dyker." 

"  That's  no  reason  why  you  should  double-cross 
me." 

"  'E's  too  mucha  de  fina  gentleman." 

"  I  don't  care  what  he  is;  you  ought  to  know  what 
I  am.  Do  you  want  to  tear  up  your  own  meal-ticket 
and  throw  down  your  easy  money?  " 

"  Easy  mon'?    You  maka  de  joke!  " 

The  woman's  voice  noticeably  changed. 

"  Do  you  mean  you  want  some  more  coin?  "  she 
asked. 

The  Italian  did  not  answer. 

"  Because  I  won't  give  it  to  you,"  Rose  continued, 
anger  darting  into  her  still  cautiously  lowered  voice. 
"  I  know  what  you're  doing  with  it.  I  know  you 
had  a  girl  from  a  department  store  out  at  shows  twice 
last  week,  an'  the  second  time  she  had  a  new  dress 
on." 

Somewhere  in  the  front  of  the  house  a  door  closed 
heavily. 

'  'E's  comin',"  the  Italian  coolly  commented. 
"  Do  you  wanta  that  I  go  along  in  with  you?  " 

As  quickly  as  it  had  entered,  all  the  anger  fled 
from  Rose's  voice,  and  Violet,  accustomed  to  it  in 
command  or  at  satisfied  ease,  was  amazed  now  to 
hear  it  swaying  between  terror  and  genuine  affection. 

"I  didn't  mean  it!"  Rose  pleaded.     "I  didn't 


102         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

believe  it  when  I  heard  it  an'  I  don't  believe  it  now, 
I  know  how  much  it  costs  a  fellow  to  live.  Here's 
another  ten-spot.  I — I — you  know  how  I  hate 
Dyker,  and  Angel,  you  know  that  I  love  you  1  " 

The  listener  heard  Angelelli  rise  and  heard  even 
his  voice  soften,  though  probably  less  with  affection 
than  with  gratification. 

"  Now  you  talka  lika  de  person  witha  gooda 
sense,"  he  said.  "  Don'  you  listen  to  de  beega  lie  no 
more.  I  lika  you — nobody  but  only  you.  You  are  de 
gooda  girl." 

There  was  a  whispered  word  more,  and  then  the 
kitchen  door  was  softly  shut  and  Violet  heard  Rose, 
going  into  the  next  room,  welcome  that  Wesley  Dyker 
who,  Violet  had,  to  Celeste,  so  favorably  compared 
with  Angel. 

The  woman  on  the  stairs  hesitated.  She  wanted 
to  pursue  her  eavesdropping,  and  she  knew  that  she 
could  regain  her  room,  should  the  doorbell  ring,  be 
fore  she  was  likely  to  be  missed;  but  she  was  afraid 
that,  in  the  maid's  absence,  Rose  might  return  to  the 
kitchen  for  a  bottle  of  wine  and  discover  her.  Ac 
cordingly  she  waited  the  few  minutes  that  were  re 
quired  for  the  first  of  such  errands,  and,  those  over, 
crept  forward  to  the  lighted  keyhole,  ready  to  retreat 
at  the  first  intimation  of  danger. 

She  gave  her  eye  precedence  over  her  ear,  and,  as 
it  chanced  that  Dyker  was  sitting  directly  in  the 
limited  shaft  of  her  vision,  she  was  enabled  to  get 
what  was  her  first  careful  view  of  him. 

A  man  but  little  beyond  thirty,  Wesley  Dyker's 
face,  which  might  once  well  have  been  handsome, 
was  beginning  to  show  that  flaccid  whiteness  which 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         103 

must  later  light  to  red  and  glow  to  purple.  What 
his  mouth  might  have  told,  a  crisp,  short,  brown 
mustache  concealed,  but  the  regularity  of  his  other 
features  lost  much  of  its  effect  because  of  eyes  that, 
though  large  and  steel  gray,  were  heavy-lidded  and 
calculating.  Nevertheless,  Violet's  estimate  of  the 
man  was  not  without  justification.  He  spoke  easily 
and  well  in  the  voice  of  education;  his  excellently 
made  evening  clothes  displayed  a  figure  that  had  not 
yet  lost  its  admirable  lines,  and  even  the  face — to 
one  that  either  had  known  it  during  its  gradual 
changes,  or  to  one  that  lacked  a  fund  of  experience 
for  purposes  of  comparison — was  not  wanting  in 
attraction. 

To  the  sturdy  Rose,  whose  hand  he  held  and  who 
was  looking  at  him  with  what  she  patently  believed 
to  be  a  tender  expression,  he  was  speaking  with  a 
certain  formal  politeness  that  was  novel  in  the  ears 
of  the  listener. 

"  You  think  you  can  get  it?  "  Rose  was  asking. 

"  I  think  that  I  have  something  more  than  a 
fighting  chance,"  replied  Dyker. 

"What  does  O'Malley  say?" 

"  He  is  at  least  as  liberal  in  his  promise  to  me 
as  he  is  in  his  promise  to  the  other  man." 

"And  the  big  chief  doesn't  yip?" 

"  My  dear  Rose,  you  should  know,  by  this  time, 
enough  of  New  York  politics  to  realize  that  the 
first  qualification  of  a  big  boss  is  to  hold  his  tongue, 
and  that  the  present  incumbent,  whatever  his  other 
shortcomings,  can  always  keep  quiet  as  long  as  he  has 
no  pen  in  his  hand." 

Rose  freed  her  hand  to  pour  the  wine. 


io4         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  May  I  smoke?  "  asked  Dyker. 

"  You  always  ask  me  that,  and  you  always  know 
you  can." 

He  bowed  and,  drawing  a  cigarette  from  a  plain 
gun-metal  case,  lighted  it. 

"  Of  course,"  he  pursued,  "  I  expect  to  win — I 
always  expect  to  win,  because  failure  may  fight  its 
way  to  a  perch  on  any  man's  banner,  but  it's  sure  to 
lodge  on  the  standard  of  the  man  that  sits  and  waits 
for  it.  But  I  can't  be  sure  of  O'Malley." 

"  I  guess  whatever  headquarters  orders  will  go 
with  him,  all  right." 

"  On  the  surface,  perhaps;  but,  if  he  wants  to,  he 
can  have  his  own  candidate  run  on  an  independent 
ticket,  and  then  he  can  quietly  knife  me  at  the  polls." 

"Would  he  have  the  nerve?" 

"  It  is  precisely  what  he  did  election  before  last. 
I  am  sure  of  that,  and  yet  nobody  has  ever  been  able 
to  prove  it.  That  is  where  I  look  for  your  help." 

Rose  took  his  hand  again,  and  pressed  it  reassur 
ingly. 

u  I  always  take  care  of  my  friends,"  she  smiled, 
"  and  you  sure  have  been  good  to  me.  Where  do  I 
come  in  on  this  game?" 

"  Just  yet  you  don't  have  to  come  in  at  all.  It 
may  be  that  everything  will  be  honest  and  above- 
board — I  trust  it  will — and  in  that  case  you  need  not 
disturb  yourself." 

"But  if  it  ain't?" 

"  If  it  isn't," — he  looked  at  her  kindly,  but  keenly, 
from  under  his  heavy  lids — "  I  shall  want  you  to 
let  me  know  just  as  soon  as  O'Malley  begins  to  make 
preparations  for  registering  voters  from  this  house," 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         105 

Rose  bent  forward  and  kissed  him  lightly  on  his 
flaccid  cheek. 

"  That's  easy,"  she  laughed. 

"  Perhaps,  but  if  you  have  to  go  so  far  at  first, 
you  will  have  to  go  farther  afterward." 

"An'  now?" 

"  Just  now  I  want  you  to  keep  your  ears  open 
for  gossip.  You  are  in  a  position  to  hear  a  lot:  in 
this  house  men  talk  that  are  dumb  outside." 

"  Who  are  you  thinkin'  of?  " 

"  Several  people,  friends  of  O'Malley's.  There's 
one  cheap  little  camp-follower  who,  I  am  told,  gets 
around  here  rather  frequently.  I  don't  suppose  that 
he's  of  enough  importance  to  know  much,  but'  he 
would  be  worth  watching." 

"What's  his  name?" 

Dyker  filled  Rose's  glass,  and  poured  more  wine 
for  himself. 

u  Angelelli,"  he  answered. 

From  the  darkened  kitchen,  Violet,  her  eye  now 
fast  to  the  keyhole,  drew  a  short  breath,  and  watched 
Rose  as  the  sophisticated  spectator  watches  an  emo 
tional  actress  when  she  approaches  her  "  big  scene." 
But  Rose,  still  the  primitive  Teuton  of  the  brewery- 
calendar,  never  quavered. 

"  Rafael  Angelelli?  "  she  inquired. 

"  I  think  so.  He  is  a  little  Italian  loafer  with  no 
work  and  plenty  of  money.  You  know  him,  of 
course?  " 

"  Sure  I  know  him.  He's  in  an'  out  of  here  all 
the  time.  We  call  him  '  Angel '." 

"  Hum.  Well,  there  are  angels  and  angels,  so 
that  name  may  fit  him  as  well  as  any  other.  Thers 


io6        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

may  be  nothing  to  it,  but  he  does  hang  about  O' Mai- 
ley  a  good  deal,  and  it  might  be  worth  your  while 
to  find  out  what,  if  anything,  he  knows." 

"  That's  easy,"  purred  Rose.     "  Here's  success." 

The  pair  clinked  their  glasses,  and  drained  them. 

"And— Rose?"  began  Dyker. 

"Yes?" 

"  Neither  this  little  fellow  nor  any  of  his  crowd 
knows  about — us?" 

Rose's  placid  smile  was  eminently  convincing. 

"  I  guess  I  know  my  business,"  she  said. 

"  I  dare  say  you  do.  Only  don't  let  him  know 
that  you  know  mine." 

"  Trust  me  for  that,  Wes'  dear." 

"  Because,  if  O'Malley  could  get  hold  of  it,  he 
would  have  a  rather  formidable  weapon." 

"  He  doesn't  know  I  ever  set  my  lamps  on  you." 

"Good,"  said  Dyker;  "and  he  mustn't  know  it 
for  a  good  many  months  to  come.  Now,  then,  let's 
have  just  one  pint  more  between  us — only  a  pint — 
my  dear — and " 

But  the  woman  at  the  keyhole  waited  to  hear  no 
more. 


IX 

THE  COURT  OF  A  MERCHANT-PRINCE 

WHEN  that  injudicious  grasping  of  the  third- 
rail  had  snuffed  out  the  low,  but  stub 
born,  flame  that  a  foreman  had  known  as 
"Number  12,"  and  a  few  score  of  human  beings 
had  called  Michael  Flanagan,  his  wife,  Bridget,  had 
looked  up  from  her  washtub  long  enough  to  refuse 
the  offer  of  a  hundred  dollars,  made  by  the  com 
pany's  claim-adjuster  as  full  payment  for  whatever 
inconvenience  she  might  have  been  occasioned  by 
her  husband's  demise.  One  of  those  very  modern 
young  lawyers,  whose  livelihood  depends  upon  their 
study  of  the  newspapers,  and  the  speed  of  their  feet, 
had  arrived  at  the  Flanagan  tenement  ahead  of  the 
adjuster.  He  had  accepted  a  contingent  fee  of  ten 
dollars,  and  thereafter,  being  defeated  by  the  com 
pany's  expert  attorneys  in  a  lower  court,  refused,  as 
usual,  to  appeal  unless  the  widow  handed  him  a 
further  amount  of  money  that  was  wholly  beyond 
her  reach.  So  Irish-eyed  Katie  was  put  to  work,  as 
she  should  in  any  case  have  been  put,  and  Mrs. 
Flanagan  went  on  with  her  washing. 

The  girl's  first  position  was  in  a  second-hand  cloth 
ing  shop  on  Sixth  Avenue,  where  she  went  to  work 
at  eight  in  the  morning  and  quit  at  half-past  ten  at 
night.  The  stock-in-trade  of  this  place  was  largely 
revived  ball-gowns  and  opera  cloaks,  bought,  for 

107 


io8         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

the  most  part,  from  women  of  so  much  means  as 
to  pretend,  at  least,  that  they  never  wore  the  same 
gown  twice,  and  yet  of  too  much  thrift  to  give  their 
discarded  clothes  to  charity.  Its  patrons  were  persons 
that  the  original  wearers  of  the  gowns  would  have 
blushed  to  meet.  And  its  proprietress  was  a  little 
lynx-eyed,  hook-nosed  person  whose  sole  object  in 
life  was  to  induce  the  former  class  to  sell  for  less 
than  they  had  intended  and  to  persuade  the  latter 
class  to  buy  for  more  than  they  could  afford. 

The  virtue  of  this  method  she  impressed,  by  pre 
cept  and  example,  upon  her  six  girl-clerks,  and  she 
raised  their  profits  as  they  raised  their  prices  of  sale. 
She  told,  with  a  fine  pride,  how  she  had  once  so 
conducted  a  negotiation  that  a  Riverside  Drive  hus 
band  had  paid  her  nearly  as  much  for  a  dress  that 
he  was  buying  for  a  Forty-seventh  Street  acquaintance 
as  he  had  first  paid  for  the  same  dress  when  it  was 
made  for  his  wife. 

But,  commissions  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding, 
neither  Katie  nor  her  companions  could  earn  any 
thing  beyond  a  bare  living  wage.  The  lure  of 
clothes  was  always  before  them;  their  work  was  the 
handling  and  the  praising  of  beautiful  fabrics  beau 
tifully  arranged.  They  were  told  that  they  might 
themselves  buy  of  these  at  what  the  proprietress 
called  a  mere  nothing  above  the  cost  price,  but  what 
was  really  a  considerable  increase  over  it;  they 
wanted  to  look  their  best  among  their  friends,  and 
their  employer  insisted  that  they  look  their  best  to 
her  patrons;  there  was  not  one  of  the  half-dozen 
clerks  that  was  not  continually  from  fifteen  to  a  hun 
dred  dollars  in  her  mistress's  debt. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         109 

That  Katie,  like  many  another  making  the  same 
fight,  escaped  further  contamination,  that  the  con 
trast  between  the  oppression  of  the  hook-nosed  owner 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  apparent  ease  and  luxury 
of  her  customers  on  the  other,  did  not  tempt  her, — 
for  opportunities  were  plenty, — from  the  station  of 
clerk  to  purchaser,  was  due  in  part  to  her  own  sturdy 
character  and  to  the  accident  of  her  own  Celtic  tem 
per.  Other  girls  there  were  who  were  not  so  des 
tined,  but  Mrs.  Flanagan's  weary  feet  one  day  re 
fused  to  support  their  possessor,  and  Katie,  knowing 
well  the  need  of  ready  money  for  the  doctor  and  the 
druggist,  neglected  to  purchase,  even  on  credit,  an 
expensive  black  walking-suit  that  was  repeatedly 
called  to  her  attention. 

"  Say,  you'd  look  just  grand  in  this,"  said  the 
psittacidic  proprietress,  Mrs.  Binks. 

She  held  the  dress  extended,  putting  its  best 
points  to  the  light.  And  all  the  other  clerks 
echoed : 

'You'd  look  just  grand  in  it,  Miss  Flanagan!  " 

"  I  would  that,"  replied  Katie,  who  was  as  taci 
turn  to  her  employer  as  she  was  loquacious  to  every 
body  else. 

"  Why  don't  you  take  it  ?  "  asked  Mrs.  Binks. 

"  I  don't  just  like  it,"  lied  Katie. 

Mrs.  Binks  blinked  her  bead-like  eyes.  That  the 
girl's  reply  could  be  true  was  inconceivable. 

''  Try  it  on,"  she  suggested. 

"Where's  the  use?     I  don't  want  it." 

"  Oh,  try  it  on  anyway." 

"  I'll  be  too  busy,  Mrs.  Binks.  The  customers  're 
startin'  to  pour  in  this  very  minute." 


no         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Then  try  it  on  at  your  lunch  time.  I'll  leave  it 
handy  here,  over  this  chair." 

She  did  leave  it  there  all  day  long.  Katie,  whose 
one  dress  was  now,  in  spite  of  endless  feminine  make 
shifts,  beginning  to  show  wear,  had  to  go  through 
her  task  with  the  baited  hook  constantly  dangling 
before  her.  Nevertheless,  when  the  long-delayed 
closing  hour  arrived,  the  suit  was  just  where  Mrs. 
Binks  had  left  it.  Katie  carefully  abstained  from 
touching  it;  she  would  not  even  put  it  away. 

"  What's  this?  "  asked  the  mildly  surprised  owner, 
as  she  stumbled  over  the  garment.  "  I  declare  it's 
that  handsome  walking-suit  I  wanted  you  to  have, 
Miss  Flanagan." 

Katie  turned  and  regarded  the  neglected  garment 
precisely  as  Mrs.  Binks  was  regarding  it. 

"Well,  well,"  she  said,  "  and  is  it,  now?  " 

Her  mistress  looked  at  her,  again  blinking  suspi 
ciously. 

"  Did  you  try  it  on  ?  "  she  demanded. 

"  No." 

"Why  not?" 

"  I  don't  think  I  want  it." 

"  It's  a  fine  suit." 

"  It's  grand." 

"  But  you  don't  want  it?" 

"  I  don't  think  I  do." 

"  I  told  you  that  you  could  have  it  for  a  third 
off." 

"  I  know  you  did  that,  Mrs.  Binks,  and  it's  thank 
you  I  do  for  your  kindness." 

"  Hum — hum.  I'll  take  off  a  dollar  more — for 
you." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         in 

"  Thank  you,  no,  Mrs.  Binks.  Good-night,  Mrs. 
Binks." 

This  sort  of  thing  went  on,  with  variations,  for 
three  days,  at  the  end  of  which  time  Mrs.  Binks, 
as  she  would  have  phrased  the  occurrence,  "  came 
right  out  with  it  ";  and  for  this  ceremony  she  chose 
that  morning  hour  when  the  other  girls  in  the  shop 
had  the  greatest  amount  of  leisure  to  observe  what 
happened. 

"  Miss  Flanagan,"  said  she,  marching  up  to  the 
thoroughly  prepared  Katie,  and  peering  hard  into 
the  serene  Irish  eyes  of  her  selected  victim,  "  I  like 
my  clerks  to  look  well." 

"  So  I've  been  noticin',"  said  Katie. 

"  An'  I  don't  like  to  speak  about  it  when  they 
don't,"  continued  Mrs.  Binks. 

"You're  just  that  tender-hearted!  " 

"  But  if  you  girls  don't  wear  good  clothes,  my 
customers'll  think  I  don't  treat  you  right." 

"  How  could  they  now,  Mrs.  Binks?  " 

"  And,"  concluded  Mrs.  Binks,  overlooking  these 
interruptions  in  view  of  the  crushing  climax  she  was 
approaching,  "  as  you've  made  up  your  mind  not 
to  take  the  hints  I've  been  givin'  you,  or  the  fine 
offers  I've  made  you,  I've  got  to  say  it  plainly  that 
you're  looking  too  shabby  to  work  any  more  for 
me." 

Katie  smiled  her  warmest  smile. 

"  Mrs.  Binks,"  she  replied,  resorting  again  to 
prevarication,  and  presenting  the  greedily  seized 
that  she  still  owed  her  employer,  "  I'd  begun 
to  be  afraid  that  maybe  them  was  your  feelin's,  an' 
so  yesterd'y  at  lunch  time  I  bought  me  the  exact 


ii2         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

duplicate  of  that  walkin'-suit  you've  been  tryin'  to 
thrust  upon  me — only  I  got  it  next  door  an'  for  half 
your  price." 

Saying  this  she  had  walked  to  the  shallow  closet  in 
the  fitting-room,  taken  down  her  hat  and  coat,  put 
them  on,  sung  "  Good-by  "  to  her  consternated  fel 
low-workers,  and  strolled  away  forever  from  that 
place  of  employment.  She  went  smiling,  but,  instead 
of  the  curt  word  that  she  generally  employed,  she 
administered  a  hand-slap  with  her  open  palm  to  a 
stranger  that  accosted  her  on  her  journey  homeward. 

She  got  work,  after  some  searching,  in  a  candy 
shop  on  Eighth  Street,  but  this  she  had  to  relinquish 
when  her  mother's  speedy  illness  developed  into  a 
brief  and  fatal  disease.  It  was  not  until  the  last 
nursing,  relieved  by  Hermann's  assistance,  and  the 
funeral  were  over,  that  she  could  again  think  of 
labor,  and  then  it  was  only  to  get,  in  a  Fourth  Street 
necktie  factory,  a  small  position  that  she  lost  be 
cause  she  had  the  effrontery  to  resent  the  rather 
frank  overtures  of  the  foreman. 

Now,  although  she  had  told  her  cheerful  lovei 
nothing  about  it,  she  had  come  to  the  last  ditch. 
She  had  been  deceived  by  advertisements,  cheated 
by  employment  agencies,  denied  work  by  the  super 
intendents  of  scores  of  shops  and  manufactories.  She 
was  not  a  skilled  laborer,  and  she  had,  at  first,  noth 
ing  in  the  matter  of  recommendation;  she  belonged 
to  no  trade  union;  the  rent  for  her  little  room  was 
dangerously  overdue;  so,  also,  were  the  bills  of  the 
baker  and  the  milk  dealer  upon  whom  alone  she  was 
depending  for  food;  all  that  she  could  pledge  was 
in  pawn,  and,  with  the  soles  of  her  shoes  worn 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         113 

through  almost  to  her  feet,  the  elaborate  mourning 
costume  that  she  had  been  unable  to  resist  was  her 
only  badge  of  material  prosperity. 

Two  avenues  of  escape  were  open,  were  even  per 
sistently  presented,  yet  she  would  regard  neither. 
To  take  what  Hermann  pleaded  with  her  to  accept, 
though  her  hungry  heart  and  her  underfed  body 
cried  out  for  it,  would  have  been,  she  felt  well  as 
sured,  unfairly  to  handicap  her  best  friend,  and,  as 
for  turning  into  that  other  way — a  way  into  which 
the  streets  on  every  hand  seemed  so  easily  to  open, 
she  was  too  wise  to  consider. 

"  No  thanks,"  she  answered  in  her  soul,  as  she 
walked  by  the  leering  satyrs,  with  her  black  head 
erect  and  her  lips  compressed — "  not  yet,  if  you 
please :  not  yet,  nor  never,  I  think,  for  starvin'  seems 
some  easier  and  a  deal  quicker,  too." 

She  had  to  repeat  the  words  pretty  often,  for  they 
had  come  to  be  a  sort  of  incantation,  almost  a  pious 
ejaculation,  against  the  enemy,  and,  as  her  poverty 
grew  and  her  chances  decreased  in  inverse  ratio, 
the  enemy,  like  vultures  flocking  to  the  fatally 
wounded,  seemed  startlingly  to  increase  in  force.  At 
first  it  was  a  well-dressed  corps  strayed  from  Broad 
way  or  the  Avenue ;  then  it  was  the  bank-clerk  hurry 
ing  to  work  and  the  master  mechanic  hurrying  from 
it;  but  finally,  so  plain  are  the  signs  of  distress 
shown  upon  our  faces  by  the  selves  that  are  be 
sieged,  it  had  become  the  professionally  employing, 
professedly  unemployed. 

Yet  at  every  dawn  she  renewed  her  quest,  with  a 
glass  of  blue  milk  and  a  bite  of  bread  for  breakfast. 
Every  day  and  all  day  she  tramped  the  long,  aching 


ii4         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

streets.  And  every  night,  despairing  but  resolute, 
she  came  home  for  her  supper  of  bread  and  milk 
and  for  the  sleep  of  the  hungry  and  distressed. 

It  was  now  a  Thursday  morning.  The  milkman 
had  pounded  at  her  door  and,  receiving  no  answer, 
had  left  no  milk.  Still  gnawing  her  crust,  Katie 
slunk  out  of  the  tenement,  and,  at  the  step,  was 
waylaid  by  the  rent-collector,  a  little  man  with  a 
sharp,  white  face  that  told  plainly  of  his  own 
struggle.  He  blocked  the  exit. 

"  Good-day  to  you,  Kliss  Flanagan,"  he  said, 
touching  his  dirty  cap. 

"  Good-mornin',  Mr.  Woods,"  she  answered, 
aware  that  the  hour  for  the  last  engagement  was 
approaching. 

The  man  was  one  whose  business  forced  him  to 
mince  nothing. 

"  I  was  comin'  up  to  git  yer  rent,"  he  continued. 
"  It's  three  weeks  overdue." 

"  I'm  afraid  I'll  have  to  be  askin'  you  to  let  it 
run  a  bit  longer,"  said  Katie,  and  her  voice,  in  spite 
of  all  resolution,  trembled. 

"  But  I've  been  an'  done  that  twice  fer  you,  Miss 
Flanagan.  The  boss  is  after  me  as  hard  as  I'm  after 
you — an'  harder." 

"  I  know  it.  I — you  can't  stand  him  off  another 
week,  Mr.  Woods?  " 

"  Nix  on  the  stand-off,  miss." 
'  You  see,  I'm — I'm  out  of  a  job." 

"  I  know  that,  but  then  you've  been  out  o'  one 
fer  a  good  while  now." 

'  Yes,   only   I   rather  expect — indeed,   I've  been 
promised  one  beginnin'  to-morrow." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         115 

The  little  man  coughed  behind  a  dirty  hand. 

"That's  Friday?"  he  asked. 

"  It  is  that." 

"Well,  ain't  you  got  your  dates  mixed?  You 
told  me  last  week  you  had  a  job  promised  for  that 
Friday." 

Katie  surprised  even  herself:  she  laughed. 

"So  I  did!"  she  said.  "An'  of  course  I  was 
lyin'  an'  of  course  you  knowed  it.  Oh,  well,  Woods, 
man,  hold  'em  off  for  forty-eight  hours,  an'  if  I 
don't  get  work  then,  I'll — well,  I  won't  bother  you 
no  more." 

In  the  shadowy  hallway,  she  felt  his  eyes  studying 
her  less  with  evil  than  with  wonder. 

"  There  ain't  many  girls  with  your  looks,  Miss 
Flanagan,  as'd  be  out  of  a  job  as  long  as  you've 
been." 

Katie  shrugged  her  shoulders :  she  was  beyond  re 
sentment. 

"  The  more  pity  to  'em,"  she  said. 

u  Not  many,"  repeated  Mr.  Woods. 

There  was  an  awkward  silence.  The  collector 
paused  because  he  wanted  her  fully  to  weigh  an  im 
plication  that  he  honestly  considered  to  contain  sound 
advice,  and  Katie  refrained  from  further  comment 
for  the  excellent  reason  that  she  had  nothing  to  say. 
It  was  Woods  that  at  last  took  up  the  broken  thread. 

"  I'll  tell  you  what  I'll  do,  Miss  Flanagan,"  he 
not  unkindly  concluded;  "I'll  hold  'em  off  till  to 
morrow  evenin',  an'  if  by  then  you  can  pay  me  a 
chunk  on  account,  it'll  be  all  right;  if  you  can't " 

He  stood  aside,  and  Katie  clapped  him  warmly  on 
the  shoulder. 


n6         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  You're  doin'  your  best,  Woods,"  she  said,  "  an' 
I  thank  you  for  it.  I'll  get  the  job  someways,  but 
not  the  way  you  think,  an' — an'  I  thank  you." 

Only  half-way  to  the  corner  she  met  the  girl  that 
lived  across  the  hall  from  her,  Carrie  Berkowicz,  a 
homely,  round-cheeked,  brown-haired  Lithuanian 
Jewess,  who  worked  in  a  shirtwaist  factory  on  Tenth 
Street. 

"  S&y,  Katie  " — Carrie  prided  herself  on  her  col 
loquial  English,  as  she  learned  it  in  the  night-classes 
in  the  Rand  School — "  were  you  still  looking  for  a 
job?" 

Katie  nodded. 

"  Well,  say,  I  just  this  minute  passed  Emma 
Schrem,  an'  she  says  Cora  Costigan  is  quitting  her 
job  at  the  Lennox  store  to-day  to  be  married  to 
morrow.  Why  don't  you  pull  up  there  and  try 
fork?" 

Try  for  it?  Katie  could  scarcely  stop  to  thank 
her  rescuer  before  she  had  turned  northward.  There 
was  no  longer  left  her  even  the  five  cents  necessary 
for  carfare,  and,  though  she  was  faint  with  hunger 
and  shaking  with  fear  lest  her  tardiness  should  lose 
her  this  slim  opportunity,  she  was  forced  to  walk. 
Facing  a  fine  rain  blown  in  from  the  Sound,  she 
walked  up  Second  Avenue,  and  finally,  turning  west 
ward  to  the  shopping  quarter  now  crowded  with 
salesgirls  on  their  hurried  way  to  work,  she  entered, 
by  the  dark  employes'  door,  the  large  department- 
store  of  Joshua  N.  Lennox,  merchant  and  philan 
thropist. 

A  dozen  quick  inquiries  rushed  her,  wet  and  weary, 
but  flushed  by  her  walk  and  radiant  with  the  excite- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE          117 

ment  of  the  race,  into  the  presence  of  the  frock- 
coated,  pale-faced,  suave-mouthed  Mr.  Porter,  the 
tall,  thin  man,  with  the  precision  of  a  surgeon  and 
the  gravity  of  a  Sunday-school  superintendent,  to 
whose  attention,  it  appeared,  such  pleas  as  hers  must 
be  brought.  Mr.  Porter,  who  had  gray  side-whis 
kers,  which  he  stroked  with  white  hands,  listened  in 
judicial  calm  to  what  she  had  to  say. 

"  Just  fill  out  this  application-blank,"  he  remarked 
as,  breathless,  Katie  ended  her  little  speech. 

They  were  in  a  dim,  bare  office  under  the  street, 
the  man  at  a  roll-top  desk  lighted  by  a  green-shaded 
incandescent  lamp,  the  girl  standing  beside  him. 
Mr.  Porter  indicated  a  writing-shelf  along  the  op 
posite  wall,  where  Katie  found  a  pile  of  the  blanks, 
and  pen  and  ink.  While  she  struggled  with  the  task 
assigned  her,  Mr.  Porter  verified,  by  brief,  sharp 
inquiries  through  a  telephone,  her  statement  of  the 
approaching  marriage  of  Miss  Cora  Costigan. 

Katie,  meanwhile,  was  giving  her  age,  her  parent 
age,  her  birthplace,  the  name  of  the  firm  that  had 
last  employed  her — she  mentioned  the  candy-shop 
for  that, — was  cheerfully  agreeing  to  join  the  "  Em 
ployes'  Mutual  Benefit  Association,"  and  was  put 
ting  a  "  Yes,"  which  she  intended  promptly  to  for 
get,  to  the  question  that  asked  her  to  become  a  spy 
on  her  co-workers :  "If  you  saw  a  fellow-employe 
doing  anything  detrimental  to  the  interests  of  the 
firm,  would  you  consider  it  your  duty  to  report  the 
same?"  It  was  only  at  one  of  the  last  questions 
that  she  hesitated. 

"  Please  what  does  that  mean?  "  she  asked. 

Mr.  Porter  deigned  to  walk  across  the  room  and, 


n8         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

close  to  her  shoulder,  examined  the  question.  It 
was  the  simple  one :  "  Do  you  live  with  your  par 
ents?" 

"  That,"  said  Mr.  Porter,  "  is  inserted  because 
the  firm  wishes  to  have  only  nice  girls  here,  and 
those  with  good  home  influences  are  considered — 
most  trustworthy." 

Mr.  Porter  had  the  type  of  emotionless  eyes  that 
can  say  one  sort  of  thing  far  better  than  the  eyes  of 
more  temperamental  people,  and  he  now  met  Katie's 
steady  gaze  with  a  stare  of  considerable  significance. 

Katie  was  rather  sure  that  she  understood. 

"  So  that,"  she  said,  "  if  I  didn't  live  with  my 
people,  I  couldn't  have  the  job?" 

"  So  that,"  Mr.  Porter  corrected,  "  if  a  girl  does 
get  a  position  and  lives  with  her  family,  she  will  be 
better  cared  for,  and  we  will  know  that  she  is  safe 
at  home  evenings." 

Katie  hesitated  no  longer.  She  took  the  pen  and, 
opposite  the  query,  wrote  a  quick  "  Yes."  To  be 
sure  she  was,  on  that  account,  obliged  to  invent  the 
kind  of  work  done  by  her  father  and  the  amount  of 
the  family  wage;  but  she  so  needed  the  position  that 
her  active  wit  at  once  supplied  the  answers.  More 
or  less  truthfully,  she  put  a'  word  in  reply  to  the 
remaining  questions,  signed  her  name,  and  wrote  her 
address. 

Mr.  Porter  took  the  paper  in  his  white  fingers, 
read  it  slowly,  folded  it,  indorsed  it  with  several 
hieroglyphics,  and  placed  it  in  a  pigeon-hole. 

"  I  am  filing  this  with  our  other  applications," 
he  said.  "  As  soon  as  your  name  is  reached,  I  will 
see  that  you  are  notified." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         119 

Katie's  jaw  dropped. 

"  But  I  thought,"  she  began,  "  I  thought  I  was 
to  get  the  job  now.  I — isn't  Cora  leavin',  thin,  after 
all?" 

"  Miss  Costigan  is  leaving  us,  I  understand,"  said 
Mr.  Porter,  stroking  his  whiskers;  "but  there  are 
others — nearly  a  hundred — on  the  list  ahead  of  you." 

Katie  was  hungry,  and  hunger  finds  it  hard  to 
think  of  justice.  She  had  borne  all  that  she  could 
bear.  The  waiting,  the  walking,  the  hope  and  the 
hopelessness  had  gnawed  the  string  of  her  courage. 
Something  snapped  inside  of  her,  and  she  began  to 
sob  with  Irish  unrestraint. 

Mr.  Porter  was  embarrassed.  He  frequently  had 
to  deal  harshly  with  other  employes  of  his  philan 
thropic  employer — it  was,  in  fact,  upon  the  per 
formance  of  such  duties  that  his  living  almost  de 
pended — but  he  did  not  like  to  have  tears  shed  in 
his  office :  it  did  not  look  well  for  the  reputation  of 
the  establishment. 

"  My  dear  Miss — Miss  Flanagan,"  said  he,  first 
consulting  the  application-blank  for  the  forgotten 
name,  and  putting  one  of  his  white  hands  toward 
the  face  now  hidden  in  a  crumpled  handkerchief. 
"  You  mustn't — really,  you  must  not  I  " 

"  But  everything  depends  on  me  gettin'  this  job !  " 
sobbed  Katie  in  an  Irish  wail.  "The  rent's  due; 
me  family's  all  sick;  the  milkman  won't  leave  no 
more  milk,  an'  I've  eaten  nothin'  for  Heaven  knows 
how  long!  " 

In  a  rush  of  words  her  story,  including  that  of 
her  resurrected  father,  leaped  from  her.  What  effect 
it  would  have  had  upon  Mr.  Porter  had  it  been 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

calmly  told  is  beyond  guessing;  but  it  was  told  by 
no  means  calmly,  and  Katie's  voice  rose  to  a  pitch 
that  forced  him  to  surrender  out  of  mere  fear  of 
a  prolonged  scene.  Grudgingly,  but  unconditionally, 
he  laid  down  his  arms.  He  took  the  telephone  and 
called  again  Miss  Isaacs,  the  buyer  of  the  women's 
hosiery  department,  which  Miss  Costigan  was  to 
leave  on  the  following  day,  told  as  much  of  Katie's 
story  as  he  thought  necessary,  and  obtained  consent 
to  a  trial  of  the  girl.  He  informed  Katie  that  she 
might  take,  on  the  next  morning,  the  place  to  be 
vacated  by  Miss  Costigan,  but  he  took  care  to  im 
press  upon  her  mind  the  fact  that  he  was  doing  her 
an  exceptional  favor,  which  she  was  not  to  mention 
to  her  friends,  who  might  try  to  profit  by  her  un 
usual  experience. 

Katie  was  on  the  point  of  calling  all  the  saints 
to  bless  him  when  she  bethought  her  of  a  practical 
inquiry  theretofore,  in  her  eagerness  to  secure  any 
sort  of  work,  neglected. 

"  An'  what's  the  pay?  "  she  inquired. 

"  You  will  receive,"  replied  Mr.  Porter  in  the 
tones  in  which  his  employer  announced  the  gift  of 
a  small  fortune  to  a  large  college,  "  four  dollars  and 
fifty  cents  a  week." 

Katie  forgot  the  saints. 

"  Four — "  she  began.  "  But,  Mr.  Porter,"  she 
concluded,  "  will  you  be  tellin'  me  how  I'm  to  be 
livin'  on  all  that?" 

Mr.  Porter's  calm  eyes  came  again  into  significant 
play. 

'  You  have  said  in  your  application,  you  may 
recall,"  he  dryly  remarked,  as  he  reached  for  that 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         121 

document,  "  you  have  said  that  you  lived  with  your 
father." 

For  a  moment  her  glance  probed  his. 

"  But  for  all  that,"  she  said,  "  I  have  to  support 
meself  entirely." 

Mr.  Porter  was  still  looking  at  her  with  his  emo 
tionless,  appraising  gaze.  He  saw  a  girl  with  pretty, 
piquant  features,  with  glossy  black  hair,  with  cheeks 
that  bloomed  even  in  privation  and  blue  eyes  that 
were  beautiful  even  in  tears. 

"  Miss  Flanagan,"  said  he,  "  most  of  the  girls 
that  start  at  these  wages  in  department-stores  are 
partly  supported  by  their  family  or  have  some  friend 
to  help  them  out." 

Katie  flushed,  but  she  kept  her  outward  calm. 

"  An'  what  if  they  haven't  got  a  friend?  "  she  in 
quired. 

Porter's  cold  eye  never  wavered. 

"  They  find  one,"  he  said;  "  and  I  may  add,  Miss 
Flanagan,  that  you  should  experience  no  difficulty  in 
that  direction." 

Poverty  will  do  much  for  most  of  us.  For  Katie 
it  succeeded  in  curbing  a  temper  that,  in  better  times, 
was  never  docile.  Beggars,  she  reflected,  cannot 
afford  to  look  too  closely  into  the  source  or  signifi 
cance  of  the  alms  they  have  asked.  She  swallowed 
her  wrath. 

"  Will  you  advance  one  week's  salary  now?  "  she 
asked. 

Mr.  Porter  was  distinctly  surprised. 

"I — why,  certainly  I  won't!  "  he  stammered. 

"Why  not?" 

f<  But,  my  dear  Miss  Flanagan,  I  have  nothing 


122         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

to  do  with  the  payment  of  the  salaries.  Besides, 
this  firm  doesn't  know  you;  it  does  not  even  know 
that  you  will  come  to-morrow;  it  does  not  know 
that,  if  you  do  come,  you  will  remain." 

Katie  smiled  insidiously,  and  Katie  smiling 
through  her  tear-curled  lashes  was  insidious  indeed. 

"  Och,  now,  Mr.  Porter,"  she  protested.  "  That's 
all  well  enough  for  the  green  girls;  but  you  an' 
I  know  that  you're  the  boss  in  matters  of  this  sort. 
Lend  me  two  an'  a  quarter." 

Mr.  Porter,  pleased  in  spite  of  himself  by  her 
flattery,  protested,  but  Katie  remained  unconvinced. 
She  declared  that  she  knew  he  was  the  real  authority 
and  that  she  could  not  bear  to  hear  him  underestimate 
himself.  And  the  upshot  of  the  discussion  was  that, 
though  Mr.  Porter  could,  in  his  official  capacity,  do 
nothing  so  unbusinesslike  as  to  make  her  an  advance, 
he  would,  personally,  be  glad  to  oblige  her  with  a 
dollar  and  a  half,  and  oblige  her,  adding  a  fatherly 
pat  to  her  pink  cheek,  he  ultimately  did. 

"  Thanks,"  Katie  responded  as  she  took  the 
money,  and  turned  to  go.  "  I'll  report  to-morrow, 
then,  at  a  quarter  of  eight,  Mr.  Porter." 

"  At  quarter  to  eight,"  repeated  Mr.  Porter, 
slowly  closing  the  door  behind  her. 

But,  out  in  the  wet  street,  Katie  was  saying  what 
she  had  refrained  from  saying  in  the  darkened  office. 

"  An'  as  for  the  pay,"  she  concluded,  "  I  can't 
buy  no  automobiles  with  me  loose  change;  but  I 
think  you'll  find,  you  limb  of  Satan,  that  I  can  keep 
body  an'  soul  together  without  a  friend  in  the 
wor'rldl" 


ANOTHER  SPHERE 

THAT  same  evening,  his  crisp  brown  mustache 
hiding  the  meaning  of  his  mouth,  and  his 
drooping  lids  concealing  the  purpose  of  his 
steel-gray  eyes,  Wesley  Dyker,  from  the  rooms  he 
had  rented  in  an  East  Side  Assembly  district,  took 
a  cab  northwestward  through  the  rain  to  Riverside 
Drive.  He  was  dressed  precisely  as  he  dressed  to 
go  to  the  house  of  Rose  Legere,  but  he  was  bound 
for  the  house  of  Joshua  Lennox. 

There  he  had  plainly  been  expected.  The  liveried, 
tight-lipped  servant,  who  opened  the  iron  grill-work 
door  for  him,  showed  him  deferentially  down  a  long 
tiled  hall  and  into,  not  the  formal  white  and  gilt 
reception-room,  but  a  comfortable,  dimly-lighted 
apartment,  a  smoking-room,  hung  with  fading  medi 
aeval  tapestries,  the  floor  covered  with  deep  rugs  of 
the  Orient,  and  the  chairs  wide,  broad-armed,  and 
upholstered  in  soft  leather. 

"  Miss  Lennox  will  be  down  in  a  moment,  sir," 
said  the  servant.  "  May  I  bring  you  anything,  Mr. 
Dyker?" 

Wesley  shook  his  well-shaped  head. 

"  No,  thank  you,  Charles,"  he  answered,  and  then, 
nodding  to  a  decanter  that,  under  a  wide,  soft-shaded 
lamp,  stood  upon  a  corner  table:  "  Irish?  "  he  asked. 

Charles  bowed,  brought  a  tray,  and,  when  Dyker 
123 


i24         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

had  poured  the  whiskey,  added  some  seltzer,  and 
lighted  the  cigarette  that  the  guest  had  taken  from 
a  wrought  silver  box  on  a  nearby  tabouret. 

"  That  is  all,  Charles,"  said  Dyker,  and  the  serv 
ant  silently  left  him  alone. 

Wesley  sank  back  in  his  chair  with  a  sigh  of  com 
fort.  He  liked  the  house  of  the  philanthropic 
merchant  so  well  that  he  could  have  wished  its  master 
liked  him  better,  and  when,  within  a  few  minutes, 
the  master  himself  chanced  into  the  room,  Dyker 
was  prepared  to  be  diplomatic. 

Joshua  N.  Lennox  was  the  explanation  of  that 
Mr.  Porter  who  held  so  much  power  under  him. 
The  latter  was  tall  and  thin,  the  former  short  and 
compact,  but  there  all  physical  differences  ended: 
Mr.  Porter  had  found  his  model  in  his  employer. 
Here  was  the  source  of  the  seneschal's  gray  hair 
and  side-whiskers,  his  trap  mouth  tortured  to  the 
line  of  benevolence,  his  calm  gaze  and  his  manner 
that  combined  the  precision  of  the  surgeon  with  the 
gravity  of  the  head  of  a  Sunday-school.  Mr.  Len 
nox,  in  fact,  conducted  the  second  largest  Bible  Class 
in  New  York.  He  knew  its  textbook  from  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  to  the  twenty-second  chapter  of 
the  Revelation,  and  he  believed  in  the  literal  inspira 
tion  of  every  verse  of  the  original  and  of  every  sylla 
ble  of  the  English  translation. 

It  was  in  the  voice  in  which  he  habitually  ad 
dressed  his  Bible  Class,  the  voice  of  one  uttering  a 
benediction,  that  he  said: 

"  Good-evening,   Mr.   Dyker." 

Wesley  put  down  his  glass  and  rose  to  his  feet. 

The  man  before  him  was  the  perfection  of  that 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         125 

noble  work  of  Heaven,  a  Prominent  Citizen.  Joshua 
Lennox  endowed  Bowery  chapels  with  organs  and 
meat-supplies;  he  contributed  heavily  to  missions 
among  the  benighted  Japanese;  he  assisted  in  arbi 
trating  strikes  wherein  his  fellow-employers  were 
concerned;  he  always  served  on  memorial  commit 
tees;  and  he  regularly  subscribed  to  the  campaign 
funds  of  all  movements  toward  municipal  political 
reform. 

If  his  climbing  wife  insisted  upon  having  liquor 
in  the  house,  Mr.  Lennox  never  touched  it.  If  she 
served  tobacco,  he  did  not  smoke.  If  she  took  in 
a  Sunday  paper,  written  and  printed  on  Saturday, 
he  would  read  no  news  until  the  appearance  of  the 
Monday  journal  merely  written  and  printed  on  Sun 
day.  And  if  his  mercantile  establishment  sold  poker- 
chips  under  the  pseudonym  of  "  counters,"  he  was 
aware  only  that  it  did  not  sell  playing-cards.  The 
business  he  considered  as  his  creation  had  grown  be 
yond  the  limits  of  his  power,  and  though,  a  good  man 
and  sincere,  he  might  have  done  something  by  keep 
ing  a  closer  eye  upon  his  work,  he  was  in  reality 
as  much  the  creature  of  conditions  as  his  worst-paid 
cash-boy.  The  great  Frederick  complained  that  a 
monarch  could  not  know  all  the  evil  done  in  his 
kingdom :  Joshua  Lennox  was  so  busy  benefiting  man 
kind  that  he  had  no  leisure  to  observe  in  his  own 
shop  the  state  of  affairs  that  made  his  philanthropy 
financially  possible. 

"  I  hope  you  are  going  with  us  to  the  opera,  Mr. 
Lennox,"  said  Dyker. 

The  old  man  shook  his  silvered  head. 

"  No,"  said  he  in  the  slow,  deliberate  utterance 


126         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

that  he  had  acquired  with  his  first  million  of  dollars ; 
"  I  am  on  my  way  farther  down  town  than 
that." 

"  But  you  had  better  come,"  urged  Wesley,  know 
ing  that  refusal  was  certain.  "  This  is  the  last  per 
formance  of  the  season." 

"  On  the  contrary,"  the  merchant  chuckled  kindly, 
"  I  think  you  had  better  let  Marian  go  to  the  opera 
alone  and  come  along  with  me.  I  am  going  to  the 
first  performance  of  a  new  season." 

"Where's  that?" 

;<  To  the  Municipal  Improvement  Mass  Meeting 
at  Cooper  Union." 

That  made  it  Dyker's  turn  to  smile. 

"  Oh,  but  I  couldn't  do  that,"  he  said.  "  I'm  on 
the  other  side,  you  know." 

"Against  good  government?"  The  elder  man 
manifestly  enjoyed  this  mild  thrust. 

"  Against  irregularity,  Mr.  Lennox.  There  never 
has  been  and  there  never  can  be  any  lasting  reform 
from  the  outside.  We  must  clean  our  own  houses. 
That  is  why  I  have  moved  to  my  present  address. 
I  believe  in  reform  from  within  the  party,  and  I 
believe  that  to  effect  this  we  want  men  of  your  sort 
to  help  us  indoors  and  not  to  attack  us  from  the 
street." 

The  merchant's  cold  eye  looked  hard  at  the 
speaker,  but  Dyker's  lowered  lids  betrayed  nothing. 

"  Yes,"  replied  Lennox,  dryly;  "  I  heard  that  when 
Tammany  Hall  first  came  into  power,  but  I  have 
never  seen  any  trace  of  reform  from  the  inside. 
What  I  have  seen  is  the  spectacle  of  most  of  these 
inside  reformers  developing  into  leaders  of  the  ma- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         127 

chine.  If  you  will  take  an  older  man's  advice,  you 
will  withdraw  while  there  is  yet  time." 

Wesley's  reply  sprang  ready  to  his  lips,  but,  before 
he  could  utter  it,  Marian  Lennox  came  into  the 
room. 

Something  of  herself  the  girl  received,  no  doubt, 
from  her  climbing  mother;  something,  probably, 
from  her  satisfied  father,  and  more  than  she  guessed 
from  a  narrow  environment.  Nevertheless,  four 
years  at  college  had  cultivated  in  her  what  seemed 
to  be  a  spirit  of  independence,  and  a  brief  life  in 
the  city  had  confirmed  in  her  what  she  was  certain 
were  opinions  of  her  own. 

She  was  tall  and  moved  with  assurance.  Her  full 
throat  rose  above  the  ermine  of  her  cloak,  supporting 
a  delicately  carved  head,  the  head  of  a  Greek  cameo, 
held  rigidly  erect.  The  hair  was  a  rich  chestnut,  the 
eyes  large  and  brown,  and  the  mouth  at  once  firm 
and  kindly.  Her  skin  was  very  fair  and  her  gloved 
hands  long  and  slender. 

She  caught  her  father's  concluding  words. 

"  While  there  is  yet  time,"  she  paraphrased,  "  Mr. 
Dyker  will  withdraw  from  this  room  and  get  me 
to  the  opera-house  before  the  overture  has  ended. 
I  am  so  unfashionable  as  to  want  my  music 
entire." 

She  was  used  to  commanding  her  parents  in  their 
own  house,  and  she  thought  that  she  was  used  to 
commanding  Wesley  everywhere,  so  that  she  dis 
missed  Lennox  and  secured  Dyker's  entrance  into 
her  waiting  limousine  with  almost  no  delay  what 
ever. 

"  There,"  she  remarked  as  she  settled  herself  com- 


128         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

fortably  for  their  drive;  "I  rather  fancy  that  I 
rescued  you  from  a  sermon." 

Dyker  laughed  shortly. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know,"  he  said.  "  I  esteem  your 
father  so  much  that  I  should  like  him  to  like  me." 

"  But  you  think  that  he  doesn't  like  you?  " 

"  I  think  that  he  is  slow  to  see  that  two  persons 
may  differ  on  a  question  of  political  tactics  and  yet 
remain,  both  of  them,  honest  men." 

"And  may  they?  "  bantered  Marian. 

"  Well,"  he  lightly  accepted  the  challenge,  "  I 
shall  take  the  specific  case.  There  is  no  doubting 
your  father's  sincerity;  there  is  no  doubting  the  sin 
cerity  of  nearly  all  the  men  that  will,  with  him, 
to-night  try  to  launch  another  of  these  municipal- 
reform  parties  which,  if  they  ever  get  started  at  all, 
are  sure  to  run  on  the  rocks  at  last." 

"  And  on  the  other  hand,"  said  the  girl,  "  I  sup 
pose  I  must  generously  refuse  to  doubt  the  sincerity 
of  Tammany  Hall?  " 

"  On  the  other  hand  you  must  justly  refuse  to 
doubt  the  sincerity  of  a  few  young  men  who  have 
seen  that  reform-parties  always  end  in  violent  re 
action  within  the  city  and,  if  briefly  successful, 
weaken  the  party  in  the  next  national  campaign. 
You  must  refuse  to  doubt  the  sincerity  of  these  young 
men  when  they  go  into  the  heart  of  the  East  Side 
to  live  and  work  among  the  people  that  make  up 
rhe  organization's  fighting-strength.  You  must  be 
lieve  in  them  when  they  try  to  get  nominated  for 
even  the  smallest  offices  on  the  machine-ticket.  And 
you  must  have  faith  that,  if  they  can  work  them 
selves  at  last  into  places  of  power,  they  will  reform 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         129 

the  party  in  the  only  way  that  will  keep  it  re 
formed." 

"  Dear  me,"  sighed  Marian,  "  it  seems  that  it  was 
father  that  I  rescued  from  a  sermon." 

"  Well,"  said  Dyker,  "  you  asked  me  why  your 
father  and  I  should  not  mistrust  each  other,  and  there 
you  have  the  reason.  You  know  what  I  am  trying 
to  do;  I  have  told  you  my  plans  as  I  haven't  told 
them  to  another  human  being — and  you  should  know 
that  I  am  not  to  be  suspected." 

There  was  a  ring  in  his  voice  that  touched  her. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  she  said.  "  I  beg  you'll  forgive 
me.  Only  really,  you  know,  you  can't  expect  father 
to  be  with  you:  he  would  have  to  break  the  habit 
of  a  lifetime." 

"  I  don't  ask  him  to  be  with  me;  I  only  ask  him 
to  believe  that  a  man  can  work  with  the  organization 
and  yet  have  pure  principles." 

"He  can't  even  go  so  far  as  that;  he  says  that 
every  system  is  the  reflection  of  the  men  that  make  it, 
and  he  says  that  the  system  you  support  battens  on 
horrors." 

"  But  it  can't  be  the  system.  The  horrors  existed 
long  before  the  system.  Is  he  such  a  conservative 
as  not  to  be  able  to  see  that?  " 

"He  isn't  a  conservative;  he  is  the  one  unpro- 
gressive  thing  in  nature:  the  liberal  of  a  preceding 
generation.  Only  the  other  day  I  mentioned  some 
thing  I  have  been  thinking  about  doing — something 
that  several  of  my  most  conventional  friends  have 
been  doing  for  ever  so  long — and  he  was  so  dread 
fully  shocked  that,  though  I'm  now  resolved  upon 
my  course,  I  can't  guess  how  he'll  take  it." 


i3o         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Dyker's  curiosity  was  easily  piqued. 

"  If  you  proposed  it,"  he  said,  "  I  can't  imagine 
that  it  was  such  a  very  terrible  thing." 

"  Oh,  no;  it  was  merely  that  I  want  to  be  of  some 
use  in  the  world  and  so  have  made  up  my  mind  to 
go  in  for  settlement-work." 

Wesley  Dyker  was  one  of  those  rare  animals,  a 
human  being  whose  parents,  though  they  could  have 
arranged  it  otherwise,  permitted  him  to  be  born  in 
New  York.  He  had  been  reared,  at  least  during  the 
winters  of  his  earlier  life,  within  the  Borough  of 
Manhattan,  and  his  views  were,  like  those  of  most 
of  his  even  less  acclimated  neighbors,  just  as  wide 
as  that  narrow  island,  and  no  wider.  Indeed,  so 
far  as  were  concerned  his  views  of  the  proper  sphere 
of  his  own  womankind,  he  limited  them  entirely  to 
an  extremely  small  portion  of  the  city. 

"  Of  course  you're  joking,"  he  said. 

"  I  am  in  cold  earnest,"  she  assured  him. 

"  But  that's  absurd.  You've — why  you  don't 
know  what  settlement-work  means !  " 

"  I  know  quite  well  what  it  means,"  said  Marian. 
"  I  have  friends  engaged  in  it,  as  I  told  you,  and 
I've  been  visiting  them  and  seeing  their  life  at  close 
quarters." 

"  And  you  really  mean " 

"  I  really  mean  that  here  we  are  at  the  Metropoli 
tan,  and  that  we  can't  talk  on  our  way  upstairs,  and 
we  won't  talk  while  there  is  music  to  listen  to." 

Slowly  their  car  had  taken  its  grudged  place  in 
a  long  procession  of  its  fellows,  one  by  one  unloading 
the  human  freight  before  the  brilliantly  lighted 
doorway.  The  pavement  and  the  steps  were  a  toss- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         131 

ing  sea  of  silk  hats,  colored  scarfs,  and  glittering 
headdresses.  Into  this  they  plunged,  hurried  to  the 
crowded  elevator,  traversed  a  lighted  corridor, 
passed  through  a  short,  dark  passage  and  came  out 
to  the  Lennox  box  in  the  great,  glaring  horseshoe  of 
the  opera-house. 

Dyker,  baffled  by  the  sudden  stop  that  had  been 
put  to  his  protests,  looked  moodily  upon  the  familiar 
picture.  Below  them,  climbing  to  the  rail  behind 
which  was  massed  the  orchestra,  was  the  pit,  white 
bosoms  and  bare  shoulders,  too  distant  to  present, 
to  the  unassisted  eye,  any  hint  of  individuality. 
Above  rose  the  teeming  galleries,  line  above  line  of 
peering  faces.  And  to  right  and  left  swept  the  great 
curve  of  the  boxes  splendid  with  lace  and  feathers 
and  jewels. 

He  saw  no  more  than  that  during  the  entire  per 
formance  and,  as  Marian,  even  in  the  entr'actes, 
would  talk  of  nothing  but  the  music  to  which  he  had 
refused  to  listen,  he  heard  less.  The  opera  was 
"  Lucia,"  and  as  Wesley,  with  a  taste  worthy  of  a 
more  discerning  critic,  considered  that  work  nothing 
but  a  display  of  vocal  gymnastics  devised  for  a 
throat  abnormally  developed,  he  would  probably 
have  been,  in  any  case,  bored. 

His  father,  who  had  what  his  friends  called 
"  family,"  had  married  what  everybody  called 
"  money,"  but  had  managed  to  invest  that  com 
modity  with  a  talent  for  choosing  failures,  and,  when 
both  parents  had  died,  Wesley,  fresh  from  the  Co 
lumbia  Law  School,  had  amazedly  found  himself  in 
a  position  where  he  would  actually  have  to  turn  his 
education  to  practical  account.  For  five  years  he 


132 

held  a  thankless,  underpaid  and  unmentioned  part 
nership  in  a  well-known  firm  of  corporation-lawyers. 
He  drew  their  briefs,  and  developed  a  genuine  talent 
for  the  task,  but  he  was  never  given  a  chance  to 
plead.  The  worm  of  necessity  spun  its  cocoon  in 
his  brain,  but  the  emerging  butterfly  of  ambition 
could  find  no  way  to  liberty. 

One  day,  however,  he  was  commissioned  to  pre 
pare  the  case  in  defense  of  a  large  contractor,  quite 
justly  accused  of  fraud.  It  happened  that,  when 
the  young  lawyer  brought  the  results  of  his  week's 
work  to  his  chief,  the  client  in  whose  interests  the 
work  had  been  done  was  closeted  with  the  head  of 
the  firm,  and,  Dyker  being  presented,  that  contractor 
learned  of  Wesley's  service.  At  the  ensuing  trial 
the  client  was  acquitted,  and  remembered  the  service. 
He  lived  on  the  East  Side,  and  made  most  of  his 
money  from  political  jobs.  The  rest  followed  simply 
enough.  Dyker  was  introduced  to  the  powers  of 
his  patron's  district,  and,  thinking  that  he  saw  here 
the  opportunity  of  which  he  had  begun  to  despair, 
he  had  left  his  former  employers  and  was  already 
shouldering  his  way  forward  among  his  new  friends. 
His  former  acquaintances  mildly  wondered  what  the 
devil  he  was  after;  his  latter  ones  began  to  regard 
him  as  a  clever  fellow,  and  the  newspapers  printed 
stories  of  him  as  a  young  society  man  that  gratui 
tously  gave  his  legal  talents  to  the  help  of  the  poor. 

For  his  own  part,  Dyker  was  quite  certain  of 
what  he  was  and  of  what  he  would  be.  He  had  seen, 
beneath  his  lowered  lids,  that  a  clever  man  could 
gain  both  fortune  and  power  through  political  pres 
tige,  and  he  meant  to  use  that  means  to  his  end. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         133 

He  had  also,  while  still  with  the  firm  of  corporation- 
lawyers,  been  presented  to  Marian  Lennox  by  her 
opportunely-met,  socially-aspiring  mother,  and  was, 
whatever  his  relation  with  other  members,  of  her 
sex,  quite  as  much  in  love  with  her  as  he  could  be 
with  anybody.  Realizing  the  power  of  her  father's 
fortune  and  the  beauty  of  the  girl  herself,  he  had 
determined  to  marry  her  with  as  little  delay  as 
possible. 

Until  to-night  he  had  delayed  all  open  pursuit, 
because  there  had  not  been  lacking  signs  to  free  him 
from  fear  of  all  male  rivals ;  but  that  Marian  should 
thus  suddenly  develop  a  purpose  in  life  meant  that 
he  was  to  have  a  rival  of  a  far  more  formidable  sort. 
He  set  his  teeth  under  his  crisp  mustache,  folded 
his  arms  across  his  heart,  and  sat  stolidly  through 
the  interminable  opera :  as  soon  as  it  was  over,  he 
meant  to  play  his  first  lead. 

He  did  play  it — played  it  as  soon  as  their  car  had 
crept  up  in  answer  to  its  electric-call  and  whisked 
them  away  into  the  night.  As  they  shot  up  the  flam 
ing  street,  her  clean-cut  profile  was  almost  as  distinct 
as  it  had  been  in  the  box,  and  the  girl,  still  thrilling 
with  the  memory  of  the  music  she  so  passionately 
loved,  was  close  to  the  mood  best  suited  to  his 
own. 

"  May  I  talk  now?  "  he  asked  ruefully. 

She  smiled. 

'  You  mean  to  ask  if  you  may  argue,"  she  an 
swered.  "  No,  you  may  not  argue  against  my  deter 
mination,  and  I  am  a  good  deal  surprised  that  a  man 
of  your  sort  should  want  to." 

"  I  don't  intend  to  argue,"  he  protested,  leaning 


i34         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

the  merest  trifle  toward  her.     "  I  mean  only  to  ask 
you  if  your  determination  is  quite  fixed." 

She  bowed  her  splendid  head. 

"  Quite  fixed,"  she  said. 

"  So  that  argument  would  not  shake  it?  " 

"  So  that  no  argument  could  shake  it." 

"  Nor  any  persuasion?  " 

His  voice  had  sunk  only  a  semi-tone,  but  her  femi 
nine  ear  noted  the  change. 

"  Nor  any  persuasion,"  she  replied. 

"  Then  suppose  I  presented  to  you  neither  argu 
ment  nor  persuasion,  but  a  condition?" 

"  But  there  is  no  conceivable  condition  that  could 
arise  to  change  me.  You  refuse  to  understand  that 
I  see  this  thing  as  a  duty." 

A  lamp  stronger  than  its  fellows  threw  a  quick 
ray  full  upon  her  face;  her  brown  eyes  were  charm 
ingly  serious,  her  lips  dangerously  sweet. 

"  What  I  understand,"  responded  Dyker,  "  is  that 
there  is  one  situation  in  which  a  woman  may  find 
herself  where  there  arises  a  duty  that  crowds  all 
others  from  the  board." 

His  hand,  in  the  semi-darkness,  sought  and  found 
her  own,  its  glove  withdrawn,  cool  and  firm  and  un- 
retreating. 

'  You  know  the  situation  I  mean,"  he  said.  "  I 
love  you.  I  love  you  so  much,  Marian,  that  I  am 
jealous  of  any  work  that  would  take  you  from  me; 
I  want  so  much  of  your  love  that  I  can  spare  none 
of  it — none  even  for  the  poor  and  suffering." 

In  that  tight  grasp  her  hand  fluttered  a  little,  but 
she  did  not  answer:  she  could  not  answer,  because, 
while  her  brain  was  telling  her  that  a  love  so  rapa- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         135 

clous  was  necessarily  niggardly,  her  heart  was  crying 
out  that  this  was  the  love  it  wanted  most  of  all. 

"  Marian  " — his  voice  shook  now  with  the  emo 
tion  that  was  tugging  at  its  leash — "  you've  known 
for  some  months  that  I  loved  you;  all  last  winter 
you  must  have  seen  this  coming;  you  can't  be  un 
prepared  to  answer  me !  " 

He  possessed  himself  of  her  other  hand,  and 
pressed  her  inert  palms  between  his  own. 

But  the  girl's  determination  loomed  large  to  her. 
Through  her  entire  life  she  had  been  shut  away 
from  the  real  world,  behind  rich  curtains  and  amid 
soft  lights,  until,  fired  with  the  unrest  of  a  partial 
education,  she  had  chanced  upon  a  glimpse  of  class 
mates  working  in  what  they  called  the  slums,  and 
now,  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  youth,  she  had  re 
solved  to  join  them.  A  maturer  woman  would  not 
have  taken  so  seriously  a  sudden  impulse  to  engage 
in  work  for  which  she  had  no  training,  but  Marian 
was  young. 

"  I  am  not  unprepared,"  she  answered.  "  I  did 
know.  But  I  know  too  that  there  are  things  that 
can  make  even  love  a  finer,  a  better  emotion." 

The  words  reminded  her  of  some  speech  she  had 
once  heard  in  a  play,  and,  entirely  in  earnest  as  she 
was,  the  sound  of  them  from  her  own  lips  strength 
ened  her.  She  was  in  love  with  Wesley  Dyker,  but 
she  was  more  in  love  with  renunciation. 

The  man,  however,  shook  his  head. 

"  No,"  he  said,  "  love  is  something  ultimate.  You 
can't  paint  the  lily;  you  can't  part  it  and  share  it; 
you  must  either  cherish  it  or  kill  it.  Which  do  you 
mean  to  do?  " 


136        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

The  car  had  turned  into  the  smoother  way  of 
Riverside  Drive,  where  the  lights  are  far  fewer  and 
less  bright  than  Broadway's.  He  could  not  see  her 
face,  but  he  could  not  doubt  the  resolve  that  was 
in  her  voice  as  she  answered: 

"  I  mean  to  take  up  the  work  that  I  have  told 
you  of." 

"But  that's  folly,  Marian!" 

He  had  chosen  the  wrong  term  of  description,  and, 
the  moment  he  uttered  it,  he  knew  that  he  had  erred. 
"  Folly  "  is  the  word  that  youth  most  resents. 

Marian  withdrew  her  hands. 

"  It  is  strange,"  she  said,  "  to  hear  you,  of  all 
men,  laugh  at  an  attempt  to  help  the  poor." 

u  I  am  not  laughing;  I'm  too  serious  to  laugh. 
I  am  so  serious  that  I  can't  pick  and  choose  phrases. 
I  meant  only  that  you  can't  help  these  people  without 
training " 

"  I  can  get  training." 

"  Without  knowing  them?  " 

"  The  only  way  to  know  them  is  to  go  to  them." 

"  But  even  then,  you  can  do  so  little.  These  settle 
ments  accomplish  practically  nothing.  They  are  fads 
for  the  people  that  run  them  and  playthings  for  the 
people  they  are  intended  to  help.  I  can  speak  with 
authority,  and  I  tell  you  that  the  young  men  and 
women,  the  boys  and  girls,  that  go  to  them,  drop 
in  only  when  they  have  nothing  else  to  do,  and  all 
the  rest  of  the  time  go  their  own  ways." 

He  forgot  that  he  had  said  he  would  not  argue. 
He  used  all  his  power  to  convince  and  to  persuade; 
but  if  there  is  one  human  being  that  cannot  be  moved 
from  a  purpose,  it  is  a  young  girl  with  a  romantic 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         137 

ideal,  smarting  under  what  she  conceives  to  be  ridi 
cule,  and  for  the  first  time  tasting  what  she  believes 
to  be  the  bitter-sweets  of  sacrifice.  Even  when  the 
verbal  war  had  been  carried  into  her  own  house, 
he  could  bring  no  concession  from  her.  If  he  was 
helping  his  neighbors,  then  he  should  be  all  the  more 
anxious  that  she,  as  the  woman  he  wanted  to  be  his 
wife,  should  have  precisely  the  experience  that  the 
settlement  would  supply  her. 

"  Then  you  mean,"  he  asked,  "  that  you  do  care — 
that  you  care  at  least  a  little?  " 

He  put  out  his  hands,  but  she  did  not  seem  to 
see  them. 

"  I  mean,"  she  answered,  u  that  we  must  wait." 


XI 

UNDER  THE  LASH 

IT  was  on  the  day  following  her  eavesdropping 
upon  Rose  that  Violet  was  awakened  early — as 
early  as  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning — by  a 
sudden  cry.  The  sound  was  one  of  some  pain  and 
more  terror,  beginning  in  the  high  note  of  horrified 
amazement  and  ending  in  an  attenuating  moan  of 
despair. 

Violet  had  been  living  in  a  highly  charged  atmos 
phere  :  she  sat  up  in  bed,  sleep  immediately  banished 
from  her  brain.  She  remained  still  and  listened. 
She  heard  Rose's  now  familiar  footstep.  She  heard 
a  door  open  and  close.  She  heard  that  cry  fright 
fully  begin  again,  and  then  she  heard  it  more  fright 
fully  stop  in  mid-power,  cease  in  abrupt  and  hideous 
silence. 

There  came  a  discreet  tapping  at  her  own  door. 

"Are  you  alone,  my  dear?" 

It  was  the  deep,  contralto  voice  of  English  Evelyn, 
and,  as  Violet  replied  in  the  affirmative,  the  woman 
softly  entered. 

Her  tall,  almost  thin,  figure  was  draped  in  a 
soiled  pink  kimona;  her  yellow  hair  seemed  merely 
to  have  been  tossed  upon  her  head  and  to  have  been 
left  precisely  as  it  happened  to  alight;  her  blue  eyes 
were  dull,  and  her  hard,  narrow  face,  with  its  spots 
of  high  color  over  the  cheek-bones,  showed  more 

138 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         139 

plainly  than  common,  the  usually  faint  little  red 
veins  that  lay  close  below  its  white  skin. 

"  My  Gawd,"  she  sighed,  as  she  sank  upon  the 
bed  and  curled  up  at  its  foot,  "  there  are  some  things 
I  can't  get  accustomed  to,  and  that  " — she  nodded 
in  the  direction  whence  the  cry  had  come — "  that's 
one  of  them." 

She  spoke  in  a  weary  voice,  a  voice  with  almost 
no  animation,  but  with  a  curious  mixture  of  the 
cockney  of  the  New  Yorker  and  with  a  rising  inflec 
tion  that  saved  what  she  said  from  monotony. 

"What  was  it?"  asked  Violet. 

"  You  ought  to  know.     It  was  another  of  them." 

"  You  mean "  The  question  trailed  into  noth 
ingness  on  Violet's  whitening  lips. 

"  Yes,"  said  Evelyn,  seizing  a  pillow  and  snug 
gling  her  broad  shoulders  against  it.  "  Got  a  cig?  " 
And  then,  as  her  hostess  produced  a  box  from  under 
the  mattress :  "  It  does  so  get  upon  my  nerves.  Why, 
sometimes  they  come  here  young  enough  to  play  with 
dollies.  This  time  there  'was  no  more  sleep  for 
boiby.  Had  to  run  downstairs  and  rig  a  B.  and  S., 
and  then  come  up  to  girlie  here  for  company." 

"How — how  did  this  happen?" 

"How  the  deuce  do  you  suppose?  One  story  is 
pretty  much  all  of  them,  my  dear,  and  one  about 
as  narsty  as  the  others." 

"But  this?" 

"  Oh,  this  broke  me  up  just  because  I  had  the 
bad  luck  to  hear  the  details,  though  I  must  say  I've 
heard  the  same  details  often  enough  before.  Her 
people  lived  in  a  tenement  in  Essex  Street,  where 
it's  so  crowded  that  the  men  have  to  come  outside 


140        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

every  evening  while  their  wives  cook  the  dinners — 
three  nine-by-seven  rooms,  no  barth  and  no  privacy; 
four  children  from  eighteen  to  ten  in  one  room;  pa, 
ma,  the  boiby,  and  the  seven-year-old  in  the  second, 
and  the  cot  in  the  kitchen-living-room  rented  to  the 
lodger.  The  lodger  was  the  wiggly  snake  under  the 
apple-tree." 

"  He  brought  her  here?  " 

"  Gave  her,  as  you  might  say,  the  general  direc 
tions.  But  she'd  have  come  along  of  her  own  self 
sometime." 

"How  could  she?" 

"  How  couldn't  she,  you  mean !  Those  tenements 
are  not  for  living  in — there  isn't  room  for  that — 
they're  just  to  eat  in,  when  you've  got  enough,  and 
sleep  in,  when  you  can  sleep,  and  die  in,  when  you 
have  to." 

"  So  this  girl  had  to  live  outside?  " 

"  On  the  doorsteps  and  the  roofs  when  it  was 
hot,  and  walking  up  and  down  the  street  when  it 
wasn't." 

Violet  remembered  her  own  home,  and  reflected 
that  her  excuse  was  less,  because  her  surroundings 
had  been  better. 

"  That  must  have  been  pretty  bad,"  she  said. 

"  It  was  bad,  but  it  wasn't  so  bad  as  being  indoors, 
my  dear.  That's  what  most  girls  think  about  it 
anyway,  and  that's  why  they  never  go  home  before 
ten  or  eleven.  How  else  do  the  moving-picture  shows 
keep  running  and  how  else  do  the  dance-halls  make 
their  cakes  and  ale?  " 

"The  dance-halls?"  The  word  was  new  to 
Violet. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         141 

"  Yes,  my  dear,  I  said  the  dance-halls — where  you 
pay  five  cents  to  dance  in  the  dust,  with  the  windows 
nailed  fast  to  start  a  thirst,  and  then  buy  you  bad 
beer  of  the  kind  proprietor.  That's  where  the  lodger 
took  this  girl,  and  that's  where  she  learned  to  drink." 

"Too  much?" 

"  Chuck  it,  dearie,  chuck  it.  Among  all  the  wast 
ers  I've  known,  I've  never  found  one  drunkard:  they 
all  called  themselves  moderate  drinkers.  Well,  this 
girlie  played  double  for  a  bit,  and  then  met  a  nice 
young  man  that  wanted  to  marry  her  next  day.  She 
woke  up  here." 

"Did  they  drug  her?" 

"  Did  they  drug  you?  They  don't  have  to  drug 
you :  you  know  that.  The  minute  a  girl  tells  me  she 
was  drugged,  I  say  to  myself:  '  You're  the  kind  that 
walk  in  and  won't  take  "  No  "  for  an  answer.'  No, 
you  catch  flies  with  syrup ;  you  don't  shoot  them  with 
machine-guns.  Narsty  business,  no?  " 

Violet  was  hearing  for  the  first  time  how  life  made 
the  net  in  which  it  had  taken  her.  She  passed  her 
hand  across  her  burning  eyes. 

"  You  seem  to  have  seen  a  lot,"  she  said. 

"Haven't  I  just?  I  had  my  own  little  flat — to 
myself,  too — once  upon  a  time,  and  I  kept  my  eyes 
about  me.  There  was  the  Dago  woman  that  owned 
a  fruit-stand  on  my  corner.  She  lived  in  an  alley 
off  Houston  Street,  and  had  a  sixteen-year-old  daugh 
ter  who  worked  twelve  hours  a  day  rolling  cigarettes. 
— Chuck  me  another,  there's  a  good  girlie.  Thanks, 
awfully. — That  girl  hated  her  work — can  you  blame 
her? — met  a  man  that  told  her  she  wouldn't  have  to 
work  any  more,  and  good-by." 


i42         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"She  went  with  him?" 

"  Parsed  out  of  sight  completely,  my  dear. 
Mother  nearly  crazy.  Went  to  the  police.  Police 
added  the  girlie's  name  to  their  three  columns  of 
other  missing  girls  for  that  year,  and  said  they 
couldn't  guess  where  she  was.  An  uncle  tried  to  go 
on  an  inspection-tour  of  his  own,  and  had  spent  about 
all  the  family  cash  when  he  got  to  a  flat  on  West 
Fortieth  Street  and  had  its  girls  in  for  the  usual 
drinks.  He  saw  his  niece,  but  the  bouncer  knocked 
him  down,  and  when  he  woke  up  in  the  arey,  the 
happy  family  had  moved." 

"And  that  was  all?" 

"  That  was  all  till,  some  two  years  later,  the  girl 
sent  for  her  mother  to  come  to  Bellevue  to  see  her 
die.  As  soon  as  she  was  used  up,  they'd  turned  her 
out  without  one  of  the  pennies  she  had  earned  for 
them. — Narsty,  eh?" 

There  was  a  brief  pause. 

"  I  guess,"  said  Violet,  "  there  ain't  much  chance 
for  you  unless  you're  good." 

"  My  dear,"  answered  the  Englishwoman,  "  if 
you're  good,  you  haven't  a  chance  at  all.  It's  just 
a  question  of  whether  you  have  or  haven't  enough  to 
live  on.  The  best  guardian  of  a  man's  virtue  is 
the  worst  enemy  of  a  woman's — and  that's  an  empty 
pocketbook,  my  dear." 

But  Violet  was  in  no  mind  for  generalizations. 

"  It's  a  business,  then,  ain't  it?  "  she  asked. 

"  A  regular  business,"  nodded  Evelyn, — "  fifty 
cents  up — and  now  that  they've  smashed  the  lotteries, 
policy,  and  the  races,  it's  more  of  a  business  than 
ever.  There  are  hundreds  of  young  chaps  all  over 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         i  i3 

the  country  who  make  their  living  by  selling  girls 
to  places  like  this — and  worse  than  this;  and  there 
are  more  who  make  better  livings  by  making  one, 
or  two,  or  even  three  girls  walk  the  street  for  them. 
Just  now,  in  New  York,  the  street's  the  main 
thing." 

"An'  people  like  Miss  Rose ?" 

"  They  buy  the  girls  and  pay  a  percentage  on  their 
work,  my  dear,  till  the  debt's  cleared.  Sometimes 
they  give  their  girls  nothing  but  brass  checks  for 
every  job,  but  whether  we  get  brass  checks  or  real 
cash,  it's  all  the  same :  board  and  lodging  and  clothes 
are  so  high  that  we  never  get  out  of  debt  to  the 
madam.  Trust  her  for  that  I  " 

She  had  a  thorough  knowledge  of  her  subject, 
and  she  ran  on  as  if  her  only  interest  in  it  were 
economic.  She  talked  of  Denver,  with  its  two-room 
houses  in  which  the  front  seemed  one  large  window 
where  the  sola  inmate  displayed  her  wares;  of  Chi 
cago  with  the  curtained  doors  through  which  was 
thrust  only  a  hand  to  receive  the  varying  price  of 
admission,  even  a  quarter  of  a  dollar  occasionally 
sufficing;  of  the  same  city's  infamous  club  main 
tained  by  politicians  for  their  own  debauches.  She 
told  of  the  proprietresses  making  a  specialty  of 
"  sending  out  "  for  girls  that  worked  at  other  and 
ill-paid  tasks  by  day;  of  women  conducting  flats  on 
a  partnership  basis;  of  those  who  rented,  for  high 
prices,  houses  that  would  otherwise  be  tenantless  be 
cause  of  poor  conditions  or  the  opening  of  some 
street  that  must  soon  be  cut  through  the  premises. 
She  said  that  young  girls  unsoiled  would  sometimes 
fetch  their  owners  fifty  dollars  for  their  initial  de- 


i44         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

struction,  but  that,  as  a  rule,  the  sums  were  relatively 
small. 

"  And  Miss  Rose  has  to  pay  the  police,"  asked 
Violet;  "don't  she?" 

"  She  does  just,  little  innocent.  And  the  police 
have  to  pay  the  officers  above  them,  and  the  officers 
above  them  have  to  pay  the  ward-bosses  above  them 
— and  there  you  are.  It's  all  the  worse  since  the 
bosses  can't  make  any  money  from  gambling-houses, 
and  it's  all  the  worse  since  the  business  got  organ 
ized  and  meant  votes  for  the  gang  at  every  election. 
-"Oh,"  Evelyn  broke  off— "  I  tell  you  it's  the 
same  in  every  city  the  world  over,  my  dear,  and  you 
and  I  haven't  even  the  comfort  of  being  excep 
tions." 

"  Don't  people  know  about  it?  " 

"  People  don't  want  to  know  about  it.  People 
don't  want  to  feel  badly.  People  say  that  it  isn't 
true,  and  that,  if  it  is  true,  it  isn't  fit  to  mention." 

"  Did  you  ever  go  to  a  dance-hall?  " 

Forgetting  her  recent  attitude  of  democracy,  Eve 
lyn  raised  her  pointed  chin. 

"  I  should  say  not,"  she  answered.  "  Only  a  year 
ago  I  had  that  apartment  of  my  very  own.  An 
Africander  took  me  out  of  the  chorus  at  the 
'  Gaiety '  over  home, — and  a  good  job,  too — and, 
when  he  died  and  I  came  here,  one  of  the  best  doctors 
in  this  town  took  care  of  me.  He  said  he  was  going 
to  marry  me,"  she  ended  with  a  short  laugh,  "  But 
when  his  old  wife  died,  he  forgot  that,  and  forgot 
me,  and  married  a  society  girl  young  enough  to  be 
his  grandchild.  Of  course  he  died  himself  after  a 
few  months,  but  that  didn't  help  me,  my  dear:  I 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         145 

had  to  strike  out,   and  now,   from  the  best  places 
I've  come  down  as  far  as  this." 

Violet  was  still  too  young  to  feel  keenly  for  an 
other  while  herself  in  suffering,  a  fact  that  must 
have  presented  itself  to  Evelyn,  because  she  turned 
from  her  own  story  with  an  easy  shrug. 

"  After  all,"  she  pursued,  "  the  thing's  at  least 
better  run  now  that  it  has  become  a  men's  business. 
There  are  no  jobs  left  at  the  top  except  the  running  of 
the  houses:  the  men  get  the  girls,  the  rents,  and 
most  of  the  profits." 

"  Fritzie  said  they  got  lots  of  immigrants." 
"  Well,  rather.  Most  of  the  Dago  ditch-diggers 
go  home  every  winter,  and  any  one  of  them  will  bring 
a  girl  back  with  him  as  his  wife  if  you'll  pay  him 
a  little  over  the  price  of  the  passage  money.  That's 
one  way,  but  there  are  a  jolly  lot  more,  not  to  men 
tion  the  make-believe  employment  agencies  that  catch 
the  girls  by  regiments.  The  women  are  packed  over 
here  in  the  steerage  like  cattle,  my  dear,  and  ticketed 
like  low-class  freight.  All  they  own  goes  into  a 
small  handbag  and  once  they  get  here,  they're  herded 
ten  in  a  room  till  the  agency-runners  call  for  them. 
Around  Houston  Street  you  can  see  streets  full  of 
those  nifty  little  agencies:  they  ship  the  girls  all 
over  the  States." 

"  I  never  thought  such  things  could  happen." 
"  Of  course  you  didn't.  Nobody  does,  my  dear 
— and  that's  one  reason  they  do  happen.  Not  that 
the  immigrants  are  unduly  favored.  All  over  the 
East  Side  you  can  see  families  of  the  Chosen  People 
going  into  real  mourning  for  cadet-caught  girlies, 
just  as  if  the  poor  things  were  really  dead.  The 


i46         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

other  races  suffer  quite  as  much,  too,  though  the 
Yankees  are  less  likely  to  get  into  the  cheaper  joints." 

"  That's  where  they  give  them  the  brass  checks?  " 
asked  Violet. 

"  Yes.  The  man  buys  the  checks  downstairs,  on 
a  commutation  schedule,  just  the  w'y  we  used  to 
buy  our  drink  checks  in  a  beer  garden.  The  girls 
never  see  real  money — except  when  they  make  a 
touch,  and  then  it's  not  any  use — because  they  cash 
in  their  checks  to  the  madam,  and  she  counts  them 
against  what  her  young  I'idies  owe  her.  Even  at 
that"— Evelyn  nearly  sat  upright  in  her  animation 
— "  even  at  that,  they  do  s'y  the  men  try  to  jew 
you  down  as  badly  as  they  do  here.  I've  always 
noticed  that  the  honestest  man  that  ever  lived  will 
try  to  cheat  a  girl.  But  you'll  learn  it  all  in  time, 
girlie.  I'm  only  sorry  that  you'll  never  see  the  better 
plices." 

Violet  missed  the  innuendo,  but  she  asked: 

"  Then  there  are  better  and  worse?  " 

Evelyn  laughed. 

"  Right-oh !  "  she  said.  "  The  horrid  truth  is, 
,my  dear,  that  we  and  Rose  are  hopelessly  middle- 
class.  I  wish  you  could  see  the  better,  and  as  for 
the  worse,  wait  till  you  live  in  a  plice  where  there 
are  sliding  panels  in  the  wall,  and  men  are  robbed 
every  night." 

If  there  had  been  any  sympathy  in  the  English 
woman's  tone,  Violet  might  have  appealed  to  her  for 
whatever  of  real  assistance  she  could  give,  but  Eve 
lyn's  scarcely  interrupted  monologue  soon  made  it 
clear  that  she  had  no  help  to  offer. 

"  It's  all  rotten,"  she  continued, — "  all  rotten  be- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         147 

cause  it  has  to  be.  Do  you  fancy  that,  if  Rose 
wasn't  sure  of  us,  she  wouldn't  have  her  ear  at  that 
keyhole  now?  She  can  call  in  Angel  half  the  time, 
and  one  cop  or  another's  never  far  around  the  cor 
ner.  Three  weeks  ago  Phil  Beekman,  one  of  her 
best  customers,  tried  to  balance  a  lamp  on  his  nose 
and  broke  it,  and  Riley  was  there  to  arrest  him  for 
disorderly  conduct  before  the  boy  could  get  to  his 
wallet.  He  had  to  pay  twenty-five  dollars — half 
went  to  Riley — for  that  fifteen-dollar  lamp  that 
Rose  had  insured  for  eighteen.  We're  all  that  w'y; 
we  all  have  to  be  spies  on  the  rest.  I  am,  you  soon 
will  be,  and  that  little  Wanda — well,  of  course, 
Rose  makes  too  much  fuss  over  her." 

"  What  do  you  mean?  "  asked  Violet. 

But  Evelyn  only  shook  her  towsled  yellow  head. 

"  I  mean,  my  dear,"  she  said,  "  that  there  are 
some  things,  you  know,  that  even  I  don't  fancy  dis 
cussing." 

"  She  was  an  immigrant,  wasn't  she?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,"  Evelyn  acquiesced,  with  a  yawn.  Al 
ready  her  restless  heart  was  tiring  of  the  conversa 
tion  and  her  insistent  thirst  was  crying  for  more 
alcohol.  "  Wanda  came  over  here  to  be  a  house 
maid.  She  landed  in  Philadelphia  and  went  directly 
to  an  employment  agency,  like  a  good  girlie.  They 
took  her  money  for  their  commission  in  getting  her 
a  job,  and  then  they  sold  her  right  over  here  to  a 
sailors'  joint." 

"  For  housework?  " 

"  Housework?  My  dear,  you  overact  your  part. 
There's  no  housework  done  in  those  plices;  but 
Wanda's  won  her  w'y  up  in  the  world.  Here  she 


148         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

is  at  Rose's,  if  you  please,  though  by  what  sort  of 
housework  I  shan't  tell  you." 

«  I  wish " 

"  Not  another  word,  my  dear.  Talking  is  a  dry 
game.  After  all,  drinking  is  the  king  of  indoor 
sports.  Come  on  down  and  rig  a  bit  of  fizz." 

But  Violet  did  not  join  in  this  predatory  expedi 
tion.  She  forgot  the  plight  of  the  new  captive  whose 
cries  she  had  heard;  she  forgot  even  the  details  of 
Evelyn's  just-related  case;  she  remembered  only  so 
much  of  the  general  situation,  now  made  clear  to 
her,  as  bore  upon  her  own  position,  and  she  came  at 
last  to  a  pitch  of  crafty  courage  that  was  far  more 
promising  of  success  than  any  of  the  hysterical  deter 
minations  that  she  had  previously  experienced.  Open 
revolt  was  futile;  she  would  employ  methods  more 
circuitous,  and  would  use  whatever  weapons  were  at 
hand. 

It  was,  as  Evelyn  had  said,  a  house  of  spies  and 
eavesdroppers,  and,  at  the  next  opportunity — which 
occurred  that  night — Violet  sought  again  her  secret 
place  of  vantage  on  the  back  stairs,  and  listened  again 
to  her  jailer  in  conversation  with  the  Italian.  Her 
time,  as  it  chanced,  was  brief,  but  she  heard  enough 
to  know  that  Wesley  Dyker  was  the  subject  of  the 
conference,  and  that  betrayal  of  some  sort  was  its 
intent. 

"  Nothin'  much,"  Rose  was  saying,  in  apparent 
answer  to  some  question  asked  before  the  spy  had 
taken  up  her  breathless  post  in  the  darkened  stair 
way.  "  I'll  get  more  out  of  him  later  on." 

"  Yas,"  replied  Angel,  "  but  how  mooch?  " 

"  He  said  he  thought  he'd  pull  it  off,  all  right, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         149 

but  wasn't  sure  of  O'Malley.  Said  he'd  got  a  bunch 
of  kind  words  from  up  top,  but  was  scared  for  fear 
O'Malley  would  knife  him.  He's  a  pretty  wise  guy 
for  all  he's  a  swell,  and  he's  lookin'  out  for  the 
double-cross  from  your  crowd." 

"  Fie  ast  you  to  helpa  keepa  lookout?" 

"  Sure  he  did.  Said  if  O'Malley's  man  put  up 
a  bluff  at  runnin'  independent,  I  was  to  tip  him  off 
when  O'Malley  began  registering  votes  here." 

"Thatisa  good.    More?" 

"  Some.  Said  he  wanted  me  to  keep  my  ears  wide 
for  any  news.  Wanted  me  to  pump  you." 

"He  deed?"  The  voice  grew  threatening.  "Say, 
now,  you  tella  me  why  he  knaw  you  knawa 
me?" 

"  I  guess  he  has  as  good  ears  as  most  people." 

"  But  how  he  knawa  me  an'  you " 

"  He  don't  know  that,  Angel.  Keep  your  hair  on. 
He  don't  know  nothin'  about  it.  If  he  did,  do  you 
think  he'd  stand  for  it,  an'  cough  up  all  these  here 
straight  tips  to  me?  " 

"  Na-aw,"  the  Italian  drawlingly  admitted,  in  slow 
mollification.  "  Naw,  maybe  he  woulda  not." 

"  He  certainly  wouldn't.  He  don't  know  nothin' 
about  it.  What  he's  afraid  of  is  that  somebody 
might  think  he  stood  in  too  good  here." 

"He  say  that?" 

11  Yep." 

"  Alia  right.  Now,  you  tella  him  when  he  comes 
again,  O'Malley  means " 

The  voice  dropped  to  so  low  a  whisper  that  Violet 
could  hear  no  more,  and,  before  it  was  raised,  the 
doorbell  had  sounded  and  she  had  heard  Celeste, 


150         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

upstairs,  calling  her.  She  tiptoed  back  to  the  upper 
hallway. 

"  Cassie  say  you'  New  York  Central  frien'  ees 
askin'  for  you,"  volunteered  the  French  girl  as  they 
met. 

"  All  right,"  answered  Violet.  "  I'll  be  right 
down.  I  was  trying  to  swipe  a  bottle.  And  say, 
Celeste,  how  does  that  Wesley  Dyker  come  to  have 
such  a  pull  with  Miss  Rose?  " 

"Oh-h!  You  don'  know?  That  Wes'  Dyk'  'e 
mabby  be  a  magistrate  nex'  'lection.  'E's  one  gran' 
man  now  for  bail  an'  lawyer  when  trouble  come. — 
'Es's  frien's  with  so  many  politicians,  too.  But  Meess 
Rose,  she  know  'e  will  be  some  more  eef  'e  be  'lected 
magistrate." 

"  Oh,  I  see.  But  doesn't  she  keep  standing  in,  on 
the  quiet,  with  the  other  people  who  want  the  place, 
too?" 

Celeste  nodded  a  cheerful  agreement. 

"  But  of  a  certainty,"  she  said.  "  Meess  Rose,  she 
know  'er  beezness.  Whoever  get  that  'lection,  Meess 
Rose,  she  will  'ave  been  'ees  frien'." 

Violet  asked  no  more.  She  had  learned  enough  to 
put  into  her  hands  the  best  weapon  just  then  avail 
able. 


XII 

ON  STRIKE 

ATIE  FLANAGAN  arrived  at  the  Lennox 
department-store  every  morning  at  a  quar 
ter  to  eight  o'clock.  She  passed  through 
the  employes'  dark  entrance,  a  unit  in  a  horde  of 
other  workers,  and  registered  the  instant  of  her  arri 
val  on  a  time-machine  that  could  in  no  wise  be 
suborned  to  perjury.  She  hung  up  her  wraps  in  a 
subterranean  cloak-room,  and,  hurrying  to  the  coun 
ter  to  which  she  was  assigned,  first  helped  in  "  laying 
out  the  stock,"  and  then  stood  behind  her  wares, 
exhibiting,  cajoling,  selling,  until  an  hour  before 
noon.  At  that  time  she  was  permitted  to  run  away 
for  exactly  forty-five  minutes  for  the  glass  of  milk 
and  two  pieces  of  bread  and  jam  that  composed  her 
luncheon.  This  repast  disposed  of,  she  returned  to 
the  counter  and  remained  behind  it,  standing  like  a 
war-worn  watcher  on  the  ramparts  of  a  beleaguered 
city,  till  the  store  closed  at  six,  when  there  remained 
to  her  at  least  fifteen  minutes  more  of  work  before 
her  sales-book  was  balanced  and  the  wares  covered 
up  for  the  night.  There  were  times  indeed  when  she 
did  not  leave  the  store  until  seven  o'clock,  but  those 
times  were  caused  rather  by  customers  than  by  the 
management  of  the  store,  which  could  prevent  new 
shoppers  from  entering  the  doors  after  six,  but  could 
hardly  turn  out  those  already  inside. 

151 


152         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

The  automatic  time-machine  and  a  score  of  more 
annoying,  and  equally  automatic,  human  beings,  kept 
watch  upon  all  that  she  did.  The  former,  in  addi 
tion  to  the  floor-walker  in  her  section  of  the  store, 
recorded  her  every  going  and  coming,  the  latter  re 
ported  every  movement  not  prescribed  by  the  regu 
lations  of  the  establishment; and  the  result  upon  Katie 
and  her  fellow-workers  was  much  the  result  observ 
able  upon  condemned  assassins  under  the  unwinking 
surveillance  of  the  Death  Watch. 

If  Katie  was  late,  she  was  fined  ten  cents  for  each 
offense.  She  was  reprimanded  if  her  portion  of  the 
counter  was  disordered  after  a  mauling  by  careless 
customers.  She  was  fined  for  all  mistakes  she  made 
in  the  matter  of  prices  and  the  additions  on  her  sales- 
book;  and  she  was  fined  if,  having  asked  the  floor 
walker  for  three  or  five  minutes  to  leave  the  floor 
in  order  to  tidy  her  hair  and  hands,  in  constant  need 
of  attention  through  the  rapidity  of  her  work  and 
the  handling  of  her  dyed  wares,  she  exceeded  her 
time  limit  by  so  much  as  a  few  seconds. 

There  were  no  seats  behind  the  counters,  and 
Katie,  whatever  her  physical  condition,  remained  on 
her  feet  all  day  long  unless  she  could  arrange  for 
relief  by  a  fellow-worker  during  that  worker's  lunch 
eon  time.  There  was  no  place  for  rest  save  a  damp, 
ill-lighted  "  Recreation  Room "  in  the  basement, 
furnished  with  a  piano  that  nobody  had  time  to  play, 
magazines  that  nobody  had  time  to  read,  and  wicker 
chairs  in  which  nobody  had  time  to  sit.  All  that  one 
might  do  was  to  serve  the  whims  and  accept  the 
scoldings  of  women  customers  who  knew  too  ill,  or 
too  well,  what  they  wanted  to  buy ;  keep  a  tight  rein 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         153 

upon  one's  indignation  at  strolling  men  who  did  not 
intend  to  buy  anything  that  the  shop  advertised;  be 
servilely  smiling  under  the  innuendoes  of  the  high- 
collared  floor-walkers,  in  order  to  escape  their  wrath ; 
maintain  a  sharp  outlook  for  the  "  spotters,"  or  paid 
spies  of  the  establishment;  thwart,  if  possible,  those 
pretending  purchasers  who  were  scouts  sent  from 
other  stores,  and  watch  for  shop-lifters  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  firm's  detectives  on  the  other. 

"  It  ain't  a  cinch,  by  no  means  " — thus  ran  the 
departing  Cora  Costigan's  advice  to  her  successor — 
"  but  it  ain't  nothin'  now  to  what  it  will  be  in  the 
holidays.  I'd  rather  be  dead  than  work  in  the  toy- 
department  in  December — I  wonder  if  the  kids  guess 
how  we  that  sells  'em  hates  the  sight  of  their  play 
things — and  I'd  rather  be  dead  an'  damned  than  work 
in  the  accounting-department.  A  girl  friend  of  mine 
worked  there  last  year, — only  it  was  over  to  Mai- 
care's  store — an'  didn't  get  through  her  Christmas 
Eve  work  till  two  on  Christmas  morning,  an'  she 
lived  over  on  Staten  Island.  She  overslept  on  the 
twenty-sixth,  an'  they  docked  her  a  half-week's  pay. 

"  An'  don't  never,"  concluded  Cora,  "  don't  never 
let  'em  transfer  you  to  the  exchange  department. 
The  people  that  exchange  things  all  belong  in  the 
psychopathic  ward  at  Bellevue — them  that  don't  be 
long  in  Sing  Sing.  Half  the  goods  they  bring  back 
have  been  used  for  days,  an'  when  the  store  ties  a 
tag  on  a  sent-on-approval  opera  cloak,  the  women 
wriggle  the  tag  inside,  an'  wear  it  to  the  theater  with 
a  scarf  draped  over  the  string.  Thank  God,  I'm 
goin'  to  be  married!  " 

In  these  conditions  Katie  found  many  imperative 


154         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

duties,  but  none  quite  so  immediately  imperative  as 
the  repression  of  Mr.  Porter.  She  had  not  made 
her  first  sale  at  the  main  women's  hosiery  counter 
on  the  first  floor,  to  which  she  had  been  assigned 
on  her  arrival — pretty  girls  always  being  favored 
with  first-floor  positions — when  that  tall,  gray-whis 
kered  gentleman,  his  duties  in  his  underground  office 
not  at  this  hour  holding  him,  majestically  approached 
her. 

"  Good-morning,  Miss  Flanagan,"  he  said,  with  a 
beneficent  smile,  as  he  placed  his  white  hand  upon 
her  quailing  shoulder. 

Katie  became  very  busy  with  the  stock  that  was 
new  to  her. 

"  Good-morning,  Mr.  Porter,"  she  answered. 
— "  Say,  Miss  Isaacs,  how  much  do  these  lisle  ones 
sell  at?" 

"  I  thought,"  said  Mr.  Porter,  fixing  her  with  his 
apparently  emotionless  gaze,  "  that  I  would  just 
come  over  and  see  if  you  were  well  taken  care 
of." 

"  None  better,  Mr.  Porter."  Katie  smiled  sweetly 
as  she  said  it,  and  still  more  sweetly  as  she  signifi 
cantly  added:  "Them's  always  taken  good  care  of 
as  are  used  to  takin'  good  care  of  themselves." 

Mr.  Porter  blinked,  but  his  expression,  or  lack  of 
expression,  did  not  alter. 

"  No  doubt,"  he  responded,  as  he  reluctantly  made 
ready  to  go  away ;  "  but  I  shall  be  glad  to  be  of  help 
at  any  time  I  can." 

"  Thank  you,  Mr.  Porter." 

"  And  I  shall  drop  around  now  and  then  to  see 
that  all  goes  well." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE          155 

"  Thank  you,  Mr.  Porter." 

"  Because  I  was  always  interested  in  Miss  Costi- 
gan — very  much  interested,  and  she  was  very  pleas 
ant  to  me — and  I  am  naturally  very  much  interested 
in  her  successor,  too." 

"  Thank  you,  Mr.  Porter." 

"  And,  by  the  way,  Miss  Flanagan,"  he  added  as 
his  Parthian  shaft,  "  I  trust  you  won't  worry  over 
that  little  loan,  you  know;  there's  no  hurry  in  the 
world  about  repayment." 

Katie  met  his  vacant  glance  with  the  innocent  eyes 
of  a  grateful  child. 

"  That's  kind  you  are,  Mr.  Porter,"  she  answered, 
"  and  since  you  say  it,  I  shan't  worry,  sir." 

But  for  all  that,  she  did  not  by  any  means  dismiss 
the  man  from  her  thoughts.  Her  true  schooling 
had  been  received  from  the  textbook  of  life,  and  she 
had  readily  observed  in  Porter's  demeanor  the  tokens 
that  announced  the  beginning  of  a  chase.  To  one 
class  of  hunters  there  is  no  closed  season,  and  Katie 
knew  that  this  class  considered  her  and  her  kind  fair 
game. 

There  had  been  occasions  when  she  had  debated 
seriously,  sometimes  with  herself  and  sometimes  with 
a  companion,  whether  it  was  worth  while  to  continue 
the  flight,  whether  from  three  to  six  years  of  cap 
tivity,  of  toil  that  must  end  in  death,  but  that  was 
at  least  assured  of  food,  were  not  to  be  preferred 
to  the  continuance  of  a  precarious  dodging  through 
the  industrial  forest  with  the  possibility  of  starva 
tion  lurking  behind  every  bush.  But  this  question 
she  had  always,  thus  far,  answered  in  the  negative, 
at  first  because  of  her  inherent  disinclination  to  con- 


fess  defeat  in  any  struggle  that  engaged  her,  and 
at  last  because  of  Hermann  Hoffmann. 

To  Katie's  cheerful  cynicism  that  blind  optimist 
was  an  object  of  unfailing  tenderness.  She  knew  how 
he  had  been  left,  when  his  father's  heart  was  broken 
after  a  long  battle  against  an  oppressive  landlord 
system,  with  a  gentle  mother  whom  he  worshiped 
and  who  thus  became  entirely  dependent  upon  him; 
how  he  had  sold  the  few  remaining  family  belong 
ings,  escaped  the  threat  of  a  compulsory  military 
service  that  would  have  left  Frau  Hoffmann  in  desti 
tution,  and  come,  lured  by  the  glittering  promises 
of  one  of  the  immigration  agents  of  a  steamship 
company,  to  the  land  where  he  had  been  told  there 
existed  equality  of  opportunity  for  all  men.  And  he 
had  told  Katie,  in  his  convincingly  simple  English, 
how,  a  shred  at  a  time,  the  fabric  of  his  ideal  had 
been  torn  away;  how  bitterly  he  had  toiled  only  to 
keep  his  foothold;  how  the  little  mother  had  fallen 
beneath  the  stress,  and  yet  how,  to  the  last,  he  still 
retained  his  high  hope,  and  still  dreamed  of  a  genuine 
democracy  in  a  country  where  the  men  that  worked 
would  eventually  become  the  owners  of  the  wealth 
that  their  hands  created. 

She  was  thinking  of  this  when,  that  night,  she 
returned  to  her  tenement  and  found  waiting  at  her 
door  her  neighbor  Carrie  Berkowicz,  the  shirt-waist 
worker,  who  had  told  her  of  the  chance  of  a  position 
at  the  Lennox  shop. 

"  Hello,"  said  Katie.     "  Lookin'  for  me?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Come  on  in." 
Katie  led  the  way  and  lit  the  lamp,  which  threw 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         157 

a  kindly  light  over  the  neat,  bare  room,  with  its 
stiff  wooden  chairs,  its  oilcloth-covered  table,  and 
the  lithograph  of  Our  Lady  of  the  Rosary  tacked 
against  the  room  door.  A  gas-stove,  a  cot,  a  bureau, 
and  a  screened-off  sink  completed  the  furnishings. 

"  I'm  just  gettin'  a  bite  of  supper,"  she  said,  be 
fore  she  asked  the  cause  of  Carrie's  visit.  '  You'd 
better  have  some." 

"  No,  thank  you,"  replied  the  caller,  with  her 
careful  night-school  inflection.  "  I  had  mine 
early." 

Katie  looked  at  the  speaker,  whose  round  cheeks 
seemed  drawn  in  a  new  determination,  and  whose  jaw 
was  swollen  as  if  from  a  blow. 

"How  did  you  get  through  so  early,  Carrie?" 
she  inquired. 

The  little  Lithuanian's  eyes  sparkled. 

"  We've  done  it,"  she  said. 

"Done  what?" 

"  Gone  out." 

"Struck?" 

Carrie  nodded. 

"  You  know  how  it  was,"  she  explained;  "  all  the 
girls  around  here  do.  We've  had  to  work  all  day 
long  from  early  morning  till  late  night,  Sundays  too, 
and  five  dollars  for  the  seven  days  is  counted  pretty 
good  wages." 

"  But  somebody  said  the  firms'  books  showed  your 
pay  was  higher." 

"  Oh,  the  books  did  show  it.  You  see,  they  carry 
only  a  few  of  us  on  their  salary  list,  and  then  each 
of  the  foremen  hires  helpers  paid  out  of  one  girl's 
wages.  You  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  most  of  us 


158         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

live  on  oatmeal  and  crackers,  and  rent  one  bed  in 
somebody  else's  tenement." 

Katie  was  acquainted  with  enough  of  the  shirt 
waist  makers  to  be  aware  that  this  was  true. 

"That's  so,"  she  granted;  "  only  I  thought  them 
things  were  all  ended  after  the  last  row." 

"  Well,  they  weren't  ended;  they  were  only  helped 
for  a  few  months,  and  now  it's  summer  and  most  of 
us  would  have  been  laid  off.  It's  the  worst  time  to 
strike — we  know  that — but  things  came  to  a  point 
where  we  had  to  make  a  fight,  or  there  wouldn't 
have  been  any  of  us  left  to  fight  when  a  better  time 
did  come." 

"You're  talkin'  about  the  union?" 

"  Yes,  that's  the  real  point.  The  bosses  started 
a  union  of  their  own." 

"Among  themselves?" 

"  No — they've  always  had  that.  I  mean  they 
got  the  new  girls  into  what  they  called  a  beneficial 
association,  with  the  bosses  for  officers.  If  you  join 
that,  you  get  all  sorts  of  favors,  but  you  can't  join 
unless  you  leave  the  old  union." 

"Well?" 

"  Well,  then,  as  soon  as  they  get  the  beneficial 
association  full  enough,  they  discharge  the  union 
girls  and,  little  by  little,  withdraw  the  privileges 
from  the  Association  members,  so  that  things  go 
back  to  where  they  were  before." 

The  girl  spoke  quietly,  but  Katie  remembered 
many  of  the  evils  that  Carrie  had  not  mentioned. 
She  recalled  how  each  moment's  pause  in  work 
meant  a  deduction  from  the  worker's  pay;  how  the 
elaborate  system  of  fines  taxed  the  girl  whose  fingers 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE          159 

left  her  task  to  rearrange  a  straying  lock  of  hair, 
and  how  the  tears  forced  by  overstrained  nerves  or 
over-exerted  muscles  cost  the  offender  almost  a  fixed 
price  apiece;  how  the  girls  that  did  piecework  re 
ceived  no  money  unless  they  brought  the  little  check 
for  every  article  made,  the  firm  thereby  saving, 
through  the  inevitable  loss  of  some  of  these  checks, 
a  proportion  of  payment  as  well  known  to  them  and 
as  certain  as  the  mortality  rates  of  life  insurance. 

"  An'  so  you  went  out,  Carrie?  "  she  said. 

"Yes;  they  turned  down  our  committee  at  three 
o'clock  this  afternoon,  and  at  three-fifteen  we  had 
all  left  the  shops.  Oh,  it  was  great!  But  they've 
got  a  lot  of  hands  left,  and  they'll  have  some  of  their 
orders  filled  in  Newark.  I  don't  know  how  it  will 
end." 

"The  bosses  wouldn't  budge?" 

"  Not  an  inch.  The  most  they  did  was  to  get 
some  of  us  aside,  each  away  from  the  rest,  and  offer 
us  seven  dollars  a  week  apiece  if  we'd  fix  things  up 
so  that  our  friends  would  go  back  to  work  without 
any  more  trouble." 

Katie,  who  well  knew  what  seven  dollars  a  week 
must  mean  to  this  calm,  hardworking  Lithuanian 
girl,  who  had  come  to  America  alone  and  was  sav 
ing  to  send  her  parents  money  enough  to  follow, 
shot  a  sidelong  glance  at  the  speaker;  but  Carrie's 
tone  had  not  changed;  she  seemed  unaware  that  she 
was  narrating  anything  unusual. 

"An'  you  turned  down  the  offer?"  asked  Katie. 

"  Last  strike,"  said  Carrie,  "  one  of  those  union 
girls  was  sent  out  to  sell  copies  of  a  special  edition 
of  The  Call  for  the  benefit  of  the  strikers.  She 


160         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

hadn't  had  anything  to  eat  for  three  days.  One  man 
gave  her  a  five-dollar  bill  for  a  single  paper.  No 
body  saw  him  give  it;  she  didn't  have  to  account  for 
it;  and  she  was  nearly  starved;  but  she  came  back 
and  turned  in  that  whole  five  dollars  to  the  fund. 
That  was  one  of  the  girls  I  was  representing  this 
afternoon.  Do  you  suppose  I  could  go  back  on  such 
girls?  Do  you  suppose  I  could  help  myself  when 
I  knew  it  was  hurting  the  others?  " 

Katie  did  not  immediately  reply,  but  her  blue  eyes 
shone.  Presently  she  asked: 

"  Picket-duty,  now,  for  yours?  " 

"  I  began  it  right  away.  I  spoke  to  one  scab  as 
she  came  out — just  asked  her  wouldn't  she  join  the 
union  for  her  own  good  and  ours — just  laid  my  hand 
on  her  wrist — but  they  had  the  cops  ready  and  their 
own  strong-arm  men,  and  had  three  of  them  beating 
me  for  my  pains." 

"Pinched?" 

"  Of  course.  The  magistrate  let  me  off  with 
a  lecture  on  the  rights  of  every  girl  to  work  for  star 
vation-wages  if  she  felt  like  doing  it  and  like  making 
others  starve. — But  next  time  it  will  be  a  fine  or 
the  workhouse." 

Katie  had  begun  to  busy  herself  with  the  prepara 
tions  for  her  meal.  She  had  warmed  some  coffee  on 
the  gas-stove  and  taken  from  the  cupboard  a  roll  and 
a  few  slices  of  dried  beef. 

"  Look  here,"  she  said,  stopping  in  the  midst  of 
this  task;  "how  much  money  have  you  got?" 

"  Oh,  I'm  all  right,  thanks." 

"  Maybe  you  are,  but  you  might  as  well  be  better. 
Now,  the  while  the  strike  lasts,  just  you  give  up 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         161 

that  room  acrost  the  hall  an'  come  over  here  with 
me." 

Carrie's  brown  locks  shook  in  doubtful  refusal. 

"You're  the  real  goods,"  she  said;  "but  I  don't 
have  to  do  that." 

"  Of  course  you  don't  have  to,  but  I'd  take  it  a 
real  kindness.  What's  the  use  o'  keepin'  a  whole 
room  to  yourself  when  you'll  be  spendin'  parts  of 
the  time  in  jail?  " 

Carrie  laughed. 

"  Will  you  let  me  pay  half?  "  she  asked. 

"  Sure  I  will." 

"  Then  perhaps " 

"  That's  settled,"  ended  Katie,  and  it  was  ar 
ranged  that  Carrie's  few  sticks  of  furniture  should 
be  moved  into  the  Irish  girl's  quarters  the  next 
morning. 

The  details  had  just  been  settled  when  Hermann 
entered,  his  cheerful  lips  concluding  the  last  bar  of 
"  Die  Wacht  Am  Rhein." 

"  Hello !  "  said  Katie,  smiling.  "  Are  you  out 
of  a  job,  too?  Or  are  you  just  goin'  to  be  late  the 
night?" 

Hermann  pulled  his  cap  from  his  blonde  curls  and, 
with  blushing  cheeks,  grinned  broadly. 

"  Needer,"  he  answered.  "  I'm  chust  on  my  vay 
to  de  saloon."  He  twisted  his  cap  between  his  awk 
ward  fingers.  "  I  vanted  only  to  ask  you  somesing, 
Katie." 

"  All  right.  Sit  down  an'  ask  it.  You  know  Car 
rie.  Don't  mind  her." 

"  Sure  I  know  her,  only " 

Carrie  rose.    She  was  aware  of  the  pair's  relations, 


1 62         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

and  too  firmly  bound  by  East  Side  etiquette  to  think 
it  well  to  make  of  herself  that  third  person  who  con 
stitutes  a  crowd. 

"  I've  got  to  be  going,"  she  said. 

"  Don't  you  pay  no  attention  to  him,"  Katie  ob 
jected.  "  Sit  still.  Have  some  coffee,  Hermann- 
boy?" 

But  Hermann  shook  his  head. 

"  No,  thank  you,"  he  said.  "  I've  got  chust  a 
minute." 

"  Then  what  was  it  you  were  wishin'  to  say?  " 

"  Aboud  dot  girl  I  dalked  to  you  aboud  on  our 
vay  to  Coney.  You  see  now  you  have  a  tshob,  it 
seemed  like  ve  might  do  somesing  for  her." 

Katie  dropped  all  trace  of  banter. 

"  I'll  tell  you  how  it  is,  Hermann,"  she  said,  and 
she  did  tell  him. 

As  soon  as  she  had  secured  her  place,  she  had 
determined  to  help.  At  present  much  financial  assist 
ance  was  impossible,  and  employment  there  was 
none.  It  would  be  dangerous,  moreover,  to  all  con 
cerned — not  least  of  all  to  Violet — for  the  girl  to 
make  a  dash  for  liberty  in  any  manner  that  would 
give  to  Rose  a  chance  to  secure  vengeance  through 
her  friends  the  police.  But  Katie  was  decided,  and 
Carrie  at  once  agreed,  that,  could  the  escape  be 
arranged,  Violet  might  at  least  be  sheltered  in  Katie's 
room  until  some  work  should  be  found  for  her. 

"  All  I  want  to  know,  Hermann-boy,"  concluded 
Katie,  "  is  however  in  the  world  we're  goin'  to  get 
word  to  her." 

"  Dot's  chust  vat  I  vanted  fer  to  tell  you  aboud," 
said  Hermann.  "  You  know  Conrad  Schultz.  He's 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE          163 

now  got  my  route  vith  de  brewery-vagon.  De 
stable's  chust  two  doors  round  de  corner.  I've  ex 
plained  to  him,  und  he'll  slip  a  note  to  Miss  Violet 
the  first  dime  he  sees  her." 

u  We'll  write  to-night,"  said  Carrie. 

"  An'  I'll  hand  it  to  him  on  my  way  to  work  in 
th'  mornin',  "  added  Katie.  "  Now  you  run  along  or 
you'll  be  docked." 

Hermann  assented,  smiling.  He  turned  to  the 
door,  fumbled  with  the  knob,  and  dropped  his  cap. 
Katie,  a  steaming  cup  of  coffee  in  one  hand,  stooped 
to  recover  it  just  as  Hermann  himself  bent  forward. 
In  the  presence  of  a  third  person,  the  German  felt 
a  sudden  thrill  of  courage. 

"  Ach,  but  you're  a  goot  girl,  Katie !  "  he  cried. 
"  Und  here's  a  liddle  revard  fer  it !  " 

He  seized  his  cap,  jerked  her  black  head  toward 
him,  and  imprinted  a  resounding  kiss  on  her  pink 
cheek. 

Katie  laughed  and  broke  free.  She  spilled  some 
of  the  coffee,  but  she  administered  a  smart  blow  with 
her  open  palm  on  the  offending  mouth. 

"  You'd  never  dared  to  do  it  if  you  hadn't  thought 
I  had  me  hands  full !  "  she  called  after  her  lover  as 
he  clattered  heavily  and  happily  down  the  stairs. 
"  An'  just  in  revenge  for  that,"  she  added,  still 
blushing,  to  Carrie,  as  she  closed  the  door,  "  me  an' 
you'll  go  out  for  a  little  spree  of  our  own  to-night." 

"Where  to?  "  asked  the  factory-girl. 

"  To  a  dance,"  answered  Katie.  "  Me  feet  have 
got  that  lazy  walkin'  after  a  job  that  I'm  afraid 
they'll  forget  all  the  dancin'-steps  they  ever  knew, 
unless  I  hurry  an'  get  some  practicin'  again." 


1 64         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Carrie,  doubtfully,  "  I've 
got  to  get  up  early  in  the  morning." 

"An'  what  about  me?  Besides,  haven't  I  got 
me  friend,  the  alarm-clock?  " 

"  But  my  jaw's  smashed  from  that  fight." 

"Who'll  see  it?" 

"  Let's  make  it  a  moving-picture  show." 

"  An'  pay  the  same  for  half  an  hour's  headache 
that  we  could  get  a  whole  night's  dancin'  for?  " 

"  I've  got  to  be  walking  the  picket-line  all  day 
to-morrow." 

"  Yes,  an'  I  have  to  be  standin'  behind  a  counter. 
You  haven't  got  nothin'  on  me  there.     Get  your, 
wraps  together  now  an'  come  ahead,  Carrie.    I  hear 
there's  a  new  place  opened  on  Grand  Street." 

Carrie  knew  how  to  dance — the  poorest  girl  on 
the  East  Side  knows  that,  because  not  to  dance  is  to 
miss  the  one  amusement  obtainable  by  the  very  poor 
— and,  like  Katie,  she  was  of  that  relatively  small 
army  that  can  frequent  the  dance-halls  for  perhaps 
as  much  as  a  year  without  contamination.  Before 
she  had  taken  her  course  at  the  night-school,  she  had 
even  danced  in  the  rooms  that  the  Hebrew  politicians 
provide  behind  their  saloons  near  Houston  Street, 
where  she  had  seen  cadets  successfully  ply  their  trade 
among  bland-faced  immigrant  girls  whose  very  lan 
guage  was  unknown  to  them;  and  she  was  therefore 
wholly  prepared  for  the  picture  that  she  confronted 
when,  Katie  having  paid  her  ten  cents  for  the  two 
admissions,  they  entered  the  low-ceilinged  basement 
of  a  saloon  and  tenement-house,  and  came  upon 
the  meeting-place  of  the  Danny  Delancy  Social 
Club. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         165 

Through  a  veil  of  dust  raised  by  stamping  feet 
and  swirling  skirts,  through  a  cloud  of  heat  from 
a  room  with  every  window  closed,  through  a  blast 
of  odors  compounded  of  the  fumes  of  alcohol,  the 
scent  of  tobacco,  and  the  miasma  of  sweating  men 
and  women,  there  rose,  from  somewhere,  the  cries  of 
a  beaten  piano,  struck  and  thumped  into  a  shrieking 
likeness  to  the  "  Chocolate  Soldier  "  waltz,  which 
only  now  and  then  was  made  at  all  audible  above 
the  rhythmic  hubbub.  Although  the  evenings  of 
Saturdays  and  Sundays  were  the  most  popular  for 
dancing,  the  floor  was  so  crowded  that  only  the 
expertness  of  these  trained  dancers  prevented  colli 
sion  and  panic.  The  steam  from  the  bodies  of  the 
performers  joined  with  the  dry  dust  in  half  obscur 
ing  the  blue-burning  gas.  The  strident  laughter  of 
the  patrons  helped  the  scraping  of  their  feet  in  sub 
duing  the  sounds  of  the  piano.  The  men  gyrated 
grimly  in  wet  shirt-sleeves,  and  the  women,  affecting 
the  most  somber  shades  chosen  for  the  longest  wear, 
spun  in  their  partners'  arms  with  stolid,  gum-grind 
ing  jaws  and  lips  that  were  mirthless.  Except  for 
the  youthful  "  spielers "  admitted  without  charge, 
or  even  hired,  to  dance  with  the  awkward  or  make 
wall-flowers  sufficiently  happy  to  insure  their  return, 
there  were  but  two  types  of  men  among  the  patrons. 
There  was  the  native  of  the  quarter,  heavy-faced, 
large-muscled,  quick  to  anger  and  ready  with  the 
fists,  a  hard-drinking,  hard-living  sort,  no  more  care 
ful  of  his  neighbor's  morals  than  of  his  own,  yet 
good-natured,  easy-going,  pliable.  And  winding  in 
and  out  among  these,  slow  and  suave,  like  some  sleek 
species  of  vulture,  were  the  young  men  that  came 


1 66        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

there  not  for  pleasure,  but  for  profit,  always-smiling 
young  men  with  manners  offensively  elaborate,  whose 
shining  black  hair  smelled  of  oil,  whose  skin  was 
like  decaying  dough,  and  whose  entire  time  was  spent 
in  making  the  acquaintance  of  new  girls,  giving 
dancing-lessons  to  new  girls  in  crowded  corners,  and 
taking  new  girls  into  the  adjoining  back-bar  for  a 
drink. 

To  these  types  the  attending  women  more  or  less 
corresponded.  Most  of  them  came  alone,  or  in 
groups  of  two  or  three — a  plain  girl  always  be 
friended  by  one  of  more  charm — because  etiquette 
demanded  that,  if  a  man  brought  a  companion,  his 
companion  must  give  him  what  dances  he  wanted, 
and  so  she  would  have  few  offers  from  his  fellows, 
who  observed  a  rigid  code  that  forbade  poaching 
upon  a  friend's  preserve.  There  were  some  that 
could  afford  to  wear  gay  dresses  because  they  were 
frankly  in  a  business  that,  of  however  brief  dura 
tion,  made  gay  dresses  possible  as  a  luxury  and  nec 
essary  as  an  advertisement,  and  this  appearance  of 
wealth  was  never  absent  from  the  hungry  eyes  of 
the  young  women  about  them.  There  were  others, 
also  few,  who  were  plainly  new  either  to  the  country 
or  to  this  particular  form  of  amusement.  But  the 
majority  came  from  the  factories  and  shops,  lured 
by  nothing  worse  than  youth's  natural  craving  for 
its  right  to  pleasure,  seeking  to  forget  the  exertions 
of  the  day  in  these  new  exertions  of  the  night,  drift 
ing  whither  they  neither  knew  nor  greatly  cared, 
the  necessary  factors  of  an  industrial  system  too 
fatuous  to  conserve  their  efficiency. 

On  every  chair  along  the  reeking  walls,  now  trod- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         167 

den  underfoot  on  the  floor,  and  now  picked  up  like 
dry  leaves  and  twirled  about  in  the  little  eddies  of 
warm  air  created  by  the  romping  dancers,  were  cards 
and  handbills — "  throwaways  "  the  patrons  called 
them — which,  often  in  curious  English,  announced 
special  balls  and  "  grand  receptions  "  shortly  to  be 
given  in  this  or  some  similar  club.  Here  one  was 
"  cordially  invited "  to  the  "  third  annual  dance 
given  by  the  two  well-known  friends,  Greaser  Ein 
stein  and  Kid  Boslair,  at  New  Starlight  Hall,  Gents 
Twenty-five  and  Ladies  Fifteen";  there  one  was 
cautioned  not  to  miss  the  "  Devil  Dance  "  that  would 
form  a  part  of  the  forthcoming  "  reception  of  the 
Harry  Cronin  Association,  Young  Theo,  floor-man 
ager";  and  again,  one  was  told  that  the  "Special 
Extra  Event  of  the  Season  "  would  be  the  ball  of 
the  "  Ryan  McCall  Social,  Incorporated,  Tammany 
Hall,  ticket  admit  gent  including  wardrobe,  Thirty- 
five  cents;  ladies  free." 

Katie  and  the  shirtwaist-maker  got  seats  near  the 
door,  waved  and  called  to  half  a  dozen  acquaintances 
and  strained  their  eyes  to  see  through  the  swirling 
mist. 

"  It  looks  like  old  times,"  said  Carrie. 

"Smells  like  'em,"  Katie  amended;  "only  I've 
been  away  from  these  places  for  awhile  an'  I  notice 
that,  new  place  or  old,  the  faces  change  pretty  quick. 
Who's  the  woman  in  red,  with  the  yellow  hair,  Car 
rie?" 

She  pointed  to  a  figure  spinning  about  the  center 
of  the  room,  her  crimson  skirt  flying  far  behind  her 
like  the  trail  of  a  comet. 

"  I  know  her,"  said  Carrie.     "  A  year  ago  she 


i68         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

came  to  New  York  from  the  country  to  find  work. 
When  she  was  about  starved,  she  rang  a  bell  under 
the  sign  *  Helping  Hand  Home  ' — she  didn't  know 
what  that  meant  except  that  it  meant  charity.  The 
superintendent  told  her  his  place  couldn't  do  any 
thing  for  her;  she  might  be  spoiled  by  associating 
with  the  people  he  helped;  his  mission  was  for  bad 
women  that  were  sorry;  not  for  good  women  that 
hadn't  anything  to  be  sorry  about.  '  But  I'm  hun 
gry,'  she  told  him.  '  Can't  help  it,'  he  said;  '  you're 
not  qualified.'  This  girl  went  away,  and  came  back 
a  month  later.  '  I  don't  want  to  come  in  just  yet,' 
she  said;  '  but  I  do  want  to  tell  you  that  I'm  qualified 
now  ' — and  she  was." 

Katie  took  the  facts  for  what,  amid  surroundings 
where  such  facts  are  plentiful,  they  seemed  worth. 

"  Hard  luck,"  she  said,  though  not  without  mean 
ing. 

"  Yes,  and  look  at  her  clothes." 

"That's  the  trouble,"  said  Katie;  "we  can't  help 
lookin'  at  them — the  likes  of  us — any  more  than'  she 
can  help  wearin'  them.  It's  that  or  a  tenement 
with  two  dark  rooms  an'  the  rent  raised  every 
year." 

They  danced,  for  among  the  soberer  men  there 
were  many  that  knew  them,  and  neither  girl  remem 
bered  the  weariness  of  her  work  in  the  exhaustion  of 
her  dancing.  Between  dances,  in  the  dressing-room, 
they  talked  with  their  acquaintances  among  the  girls, 
gossiping  of  the  men  and  the  other  women,  and  now 
and  then,  their  throats  dry  and  their  faces  streaming, 
they  were  taken  into  the  dingy  side-bar  and  were 
bought  a  glass  of  beer. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         169 

As  midnight  drew  closer  the  dance  became  more 
stormy.  Many  of  the  working-girls  went  home,  and 
their  places  were  filled  by  women  of  the  brighter 
dressed  class.  There  were  some  that  were  plainly 
drunk,  and  these  clumsily  imitated  the  suggestive 
contortions  of  the  salaried  dancers  now  sent  upon 
the  floor  to  stimulate  the  amateurs.  One  girl,  in  a 
cleared  space  surrounded  by  laughing  men  and  en 
vious,  though  apparently  scornful,  women,  per 
formed  a  dance  popularly  supposed  to  be  forbidden 
by  the  police.  There  were  several  fights,  and  in  one 
especially  nasty  scuffle  a  lad  was  badly  cut  by  the 
knife  of  a  jealous  partner. 

"  I  guess  that's  about  plenty  for  us,"  observed 
Katie,  as  she  and  Carrie  shouldered  their  way  from 
the  crowd  surrounding  the  wounded  boy  and  his 
shrieking  assailant. 

Both  girls  were  sufficiently  familiar  with  such  epi 
sodes  to  accept  them  with  calm,  but  both  were  at 
last  tired  out. 

"  I  suppose  you're  right,"  Carrie  assented, 
"  though  I  did  have  a  good  time." 

"  An'  it  was  you  didn't  want  to  come!" 
grinned  Katie  as  they  went  out  upon  the  cool 
street. 

"  I  know."  Carrie's  round  face  grew  hard  and 
puzzled.  "  I  know,"  she  admitted,  "  only  some 
times " 

"  Och,  come  on,  an'  cheer  up!  We  must  write 
our  letter  for  the  brewery-man  before  we  get  to  bed, 
Carrie-girl." 

They  did  write  it,  but  Carrie,  when  she  had  gone 
into  her  own  room  for  the  last  night  she  was  to  spend 


170         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

there,  sat  for  some  time  motionless  upon  the  edge 
of  the  cot. 

"  I  know,"  she  repeated  as  if  to  some  invisible 
confessor;  "  I  know  both  sides  of  it,  and,  honestly, 
I  don't  know  which  is  worse.  I  know  all  that  can 
be  said,  only — sometimes — I  wonder " 


XIII 

JAIL-DELIVERY 

OSE  was  ill — she  had  been  drinking  too  much 
for  the  past  week — and  Violet,  in  her  no 
longer  fresh  red  kimona,  was  in  the  kitchen 
talking  to  Cassie  when,  one  morning,  the  new  driver 
of  the  brewery-wagon  stopped  at  the  door. 

"  Morning,"  he  said  with  what  at  once  struck 
Violet,  who  was  now  constantly  on  the  watch,  as  a 
visible  effort  at  nonchalance. 

Conrad  Schultz  was  a  tall,  raw-boned  German- 
American,  with  a  long  nose  and  pale,  sorrowful  mus 
tache,  but  with  an  eye  in  the  cerulean  depths  of 
which  there  lurked  the  cold  fire  of  reliable  strategy. 

"  Come  in,"  said  Violet,  "  an'  have  a  drop  of 
something." 

"  Thanks." 

He  came  in  cumbersomely,  and  took  an  uneasy 
seat. 

"  Some  chilly  for  this  season,"  he  remarked,  with 
a  cool  glance  in  the  direction  of  the  ebony  Cassie, 
hovering  glumly  in  the  background. 

Violet  thought  she  caught  the  meaning  of  the  man, 
whom  she  knew  was  Hermann  Hoffmann's  successor. 

"  It  is  chilly  for  this  time  of  year,"  she  said. 
"  What  will  you  have?  It  better  be  something  warm 
ing.  There's  whiskey  here,  or,  if  you  don't  mind 

171 


172        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

waiting  till  Cassie  goes  for  it,  there's  some  good 
brandy  in  the  cellar." 

Schultz  appeared  to  hesitate,  and  Violet,  watching 
him,  could  not,  for  a  moment,  decide  whether  there 
was,  after  all,  any  foundation  for  the  hope  that  his 
appearance  had  wakened. 

"  Well,  if  it  ain't  no  trouble,"  he  at  last  blurted, 
"  I  would  like  a  taste  of  real  brandy." 

"  Cassie,"  said  Violet,  "  bring  up  a  fresh  bottle 
of  brandy  for  Mr. — Mr. " 

"  Schultz,"  prompted  that  individual. 

"  For  Mr.  Schultz,  Cassie." 

Cassie,  however,  seemed  to  have  scented  surround 
ing  mystery. 

"  Ah  reckon  there's  a  bottle  som'ares  about  yhere, 
Miss  Vi'let,"  she  demurred. 

"  No,  there  isn't." 

"  But,  Miss  Vi'let,  there  was  one  jes'  half  empty 
las'  night." 

"  Miss  Rose  took  that  to  bed  with  her.  Don't 
talk  so  much.  Go  down  an'  get  a  fresh  bottle  for 
Mr.  Schultz." 

The  girl  left  the  room  slowly  and  sullenly. 

Schultz  sat  silent  and  motionless  until  a  moment 
had  followed  the  closing  of  the  door.  Then  the 
cold  flame  was  relighted  in  his  eye. 

"  She  called  you  Miss  Violet?  "  he  asked,  though 
still  in  the  most  commonplace  of  tones. 

"  That's  my  name." 

"  Did  you  ever  talk  to  the  man  that  had  my  job 
before  I  had  it?  " 

Violet,  with  the  catlike  quiet  and  ease  that  always 
characterized  her  movements,  stepped  to  the  door 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         173 

through  which  Cassie  had  just  passed.  She  flung  it 
quickly  open.  The  black  girl  nearly  fell  headlong 
into  the  room. 

Without  an  instant's  hesitation,  Violet  did  the  one 
effective  thing.  She  smacked  the  negress  smartly 
across  the  face. 

"  I  heard  you !  "  she  said,  in  tones  that  were  all 
the  more  awe-inspiring  because  they  were  low. 
"  What  do  you  mean  by  spying  on  me,  you  black 
devil?  Think  I  want  to  cheat  the  house?  I'd  not 
be  so  clumsy  about  it,  if  I  did!  Think  I'm  trying 
to  skidoo?  I'd  walk  out  if  I  felt  like  it!  I'll  go 
right  to  Miss  Rose  about  this,  an'  have  you 
fired  so  quick  you  won't  have  time  to  pack  your 
duds!" 

The  servant  remained  as  she  had  sprawled. 

"  Oh,  please  don',  miss !  "  she  wailed.  "  Please 
don'  tell  Miss  Rose!  Ah  wasn't  tryin'  to  spy  on 
youse.  Ah  jes'  drapped  somethin'  yhere,  an'  ah  was 
jes'  tryin'  to  fin' " 

"  Don't  you  lie  to  me,"  said  Violet,  her  cheeks, 
now  always  so  wan  in  the  morning  light,  flushing 
to  something  like  their  former  color.  "  Get  up  off 
your  knees." 

"  Miss  Vi'let,  please  don'  tell  on  me." 

The  black  girl's  voice  threatened  to  rise  to  a  dan 
gerous  wail. 

"  All  right,"  said  Violet,  quickly.  "  I'll  let  it  go 
this  time;  but  you  hurry  up  and  get  that  brandy,  or 
I  might  change  my  mind.  Pull  the  cork  while  you're 
at  it,  and  fetch  a  decent  glass  from  the  dining-room." 

Cassie,  murmuring  thanks  with  her  thick  lips,  and 
wiping  her  eyes  with  the  big  knuckles  of  her  right 


174        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

fist,  scrambled  to  her  feet,  and  started  again  upon 
her  errand. 

This  time  Violet  left  the  door  open.  She  waited 
till  the  servant  was  out  of  earshot.  Then  she  opened 
the  door  to  the  back  stairway,  which  she  herself 
had  twice  used  to  excellent  purpose,  and,  finding  no 
body  there,  returned  to  Schultz. 

"Got  something  for  me?"  she  whispered. 

But  no  haste  upon  her  part  would  speed  his  Teu 
tonic  caution. 

"  I  asked  you,"  he  said,  as  if  he  had  not  observed 
the  little  encounter  through  which  he  had  sat  serene 
and  unconcerned,  "  whether  you  knew  the  man  who 
had  my  job  before  what  I  had  it." 

'Yes — yes,  I  knew  him.     Quick!" 

"And  your  name  is  Miss  Violet?" 

"  You  heard  the  girl  call  me  that.  Can't  you 
hustle?" 

"  I  don't  want  to  hustle.  If  you're  the  girl  I 
want,  you've  kept  me  waitin'  here  three  mornings 
already." 

"  Well,  I'm  the  person  all  right.  You  know  that 
now.  Oh,  won't  you  please  hurry?  Don't  you  see 
how  things  are  here  ?  " 

"  I  seen  enough  to  make  me  want  to  go  slow." 

"  You're  going  slow  all  right.  What  more  do 
you  want  to  know?  I  talked  to  the  man  you're  tell 
ing  me  about  and  he  said  he'd  see  what  he  could  do." 

Her  replies  came  with  the  rapidity  of  musketry, 
but  Schultz  spoke  with  stubborn  deliberation. 

"Was  that  all  he  told  you?" 

"  Sure  it  was." 

"Nothin'  more?" 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         175 

"  No. — Can't  you  hurry?  Can't  you  believe  me? 
— He  didn't  say  no  more. — Quick! — Oh,  yes,  he 
said  he'd  talk  to  his  girl  Katie  about  me. — Quick! — 
Hush-t !  Here  she  comes !  " 

Cassie's  step  sounded  only  a  few  yards  away,  but 
Schultz,  now  apparently  satisfied  of  Violet's  identity, 
displayed  an  unlocked  for  speed.  The  heavy  hand 
that  had  been  clumsily  reposing  in  the  bulging  side- 
pocket  of  his  coat  shot  free.  Violet  seized  a  fist  that 
opened  and  withdrew  as  her  own  fingers  closed  on 
a  bit  of  paper. 

Cassie  entered  to  find  them  the  width  of  the 
kitchen  apart.  Violet  was  pouring  herself  a  drink 
of  whiskey  into  a  soiled  glass,  and,  if  her  hand 
trembled,  the  silk  swathed  back  that  was  presented 
to  the  servant  hid  all  tokens  of  nervousness. 

She  waited  until  Schultz  had  slowly  drunk  his 
brandy.  She  waited  to  exchange  a  few  more  words 
and  to  see  him  go.  She  even  waited  a  little  longer  in 
order  not  to  make  her  retreat  too  patently  hurried 
and  in  order  to  subdue  by  threats  and  cajolery  what 
ever  suspicions  might  still  be  lingering  in  the  black 
breast  of  the  apparently  penitent  Cassie.  But  at  last 
she  made  her  way  to  her  own  room  and  unrolled  the 
bit  of  paper. 

It  was  a  letter  dated  from  Katie's  address  four 
days  previous  to  the  day  of  its  receipt,  and  it  was 
couched  in  stiff  and  formal  phraseology.  She  read: 

"Miss  VIOLET, 

"Dear  Miss  Violet — 

"  This  is  to  inform  you  that  I  am  Miss  Katie  Flanagan, 
particular  friend  of  Mr.  Hermann  Hoffmann,  who  used  to  drive 
the  brewery-wagon  that  left  beer  at  your  house.  He  told  me 


176         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

about  you  and  what  you  want,  and  I  told  a  lady  friend,  Miss 
Carrie  Berkowicz,  who  is  coming  to  live  with  me.  I  have  just 
got  into  a  small  job  and  Carrie  has  just  got  out  of  one,  and  we 
don't  know  of  none  yet  for  you,  but  we'll  keep  looking  and  sure 
will  find  one,  and  meantime  we  want  you  to  come  here  and  stop 
with  us  just  as  soon  as  you  can  beat  it  from  that  place  where 
you  are.  Don't  you  lose  your  nerve,  and  don't  bother  to  talk  about 
things  when  you  get  here,  because  we  know  how  it  is.  You 
needn't  worry  about  how  we  feel,  we  have  too  many  friends  who 
had  the  same  bad  luck  as  you,  and  least  said  sooneit  mended,  we 
think.  So  come  right  here  first  chance  you  get  and  stay  as  long 
as  you  like,  and  if  we're  not  home  when  you  get  here  sit  on  the 
step  till  we  do  get  home,  and  if  anybody  asks  any  questions  just 
say  you're  a  friend  of  ours,  because  you  are,  and  that's  none  of 
their  business  anyhow,  and  nobody  won't  bother  you  any  more. 

"  Now   keep   your   head   cool   and    God   bless   you   with   best 
wishes ! 

"  From  your  friend 

"  Miss  KATIE  FLANAGAN." 

Without  daring  to  lessen  her  courage  by  giving 
way  to  the  feelings  that  this  letter  stirred,  Violet 
read  it  twice,  tore  off  the  address,  concealed  it  in 
one  of  the  "  rats  "  on  which  the  structure  of  her 
russet  hair  was  founded,  and  then  tore  the  rest  of 
the  epistle  into  small  bits,  which  she  flung  out  of 
the  narrow  space  between  the  riveted  shutters  of  her 
room.  She  was  now  almost  ready  to  strike.  In 
her  captivity,  she  had,  after  the  first  shock,  made  it 
her  business  to  learn  what  she  could  of  those  about 
her.  She  knew  that  Wesley  Dyker  had  once  been 
what  was  called  a  straw-bail  man,  an  agent  who,  for 
a  high  consideration,  provided  bogus  bail  for  such 
women  as  the  police,  to  keep  up  appearances,  were 
forced  from  time  to  time  to  arrest.  She  had  been 
told  that  he  was  wont,  for  a  still  higher  considera 
tion,  to  appear  at  court  for  these  clients,  in  the  role 
of  a  defender  of  the  wronged  poor,  and  in  a  very 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         177 

different  role  in  their  behalf  with  the  dispensers  of 
justice  to  the  underworld.  She  had  gathered  that 
his  friendship  with  one  political  faction  aided  in 
securing  Rose  the  chance  to  purchase  that  expensive 
police-protection  toward  which  Angel,  unknown  to 
Dyker,  assisted  Rose  through  an  opposing  faction. 
And  she  believed  that  his  ambition  was  now  to  gain 
a  magistracy  from  which  he  could  grant  bail  on 
bonds  signed  by  his  own  servants,  secure  for  prison 
ers  the  legal  service  of  men  that  would  return  him 
a  commission,  and  pronounce  judgment  or  dispense 
mercy  for  the  furtherance  of  his  own  fortune  and 
the  strengthening  of  his  own  power.  Out  of  these 
threads  of  knowledge  Violet  resolved  to  weave  the 
net  in  which  to  catch  freedom. 

That  afternoon  Evelyn  informed  her  that  Rose 
was  still  abed  and  had  sent  for  her  favorite,  Wanda, 
to  console  her.  This  meant  that  she  would  not 
descend  to  the  ground  floor  or  be  visible  to  any  visit 
ors  before  the  next  evening,  and  that  the  English 
woman,  promoted  to  temporary  command,  would 
have  to  pass  the  night  in  that  reception  of  callers 
which  necessitated  the  appearance  of  drinking  much 
and  the  fact  of  drinking  almost  nothing. 

"  She  does  that  every  time  she  goes  on  a  bust,  my 
dear,"  complained  Evelyn.  "  Of  course  she  jolly 
well  knows  that  she  can  trust  me  and  that  I  have 
some  manners  too,  but  I  wish  she  would  remember 
that  I  also  have  a  thirst  and  can't  do  without  my 
drop  of  real  liquor." 

Violet's  nerves  tingled.  With  her  best  effort  to 
bury  all  signs  of  her  mounting  hope,  she  ventured: 

"  I  wish  I  could  help  you." 


i78         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  You,  my  dear?  "  Evelyn's  eyebrows  raised  and 
her  contralto  voice  followed  them.  "  Catch  the 
madam  letting  anyone  but  me  take  charge!  You 
know  you're  none  of  you  allowed  down  in  the  front 
hall  unless  you're  sent  for.  Things  are  ticklish 
enough,  thank  you,  with  that  new  girl  upstairs." 

It  was  almost  the  first  mention  that  had  been  made 
to  Violet  of  the  latest  captive  since  the  recent  day  of 
Evelyn's  exposition  of  the  entire  traffic.  Violet  had 
not  dared  to  ask  any  more  questions  than  those  that 
she  deemed  necessary  for  the  perfection  of  her  own 
plans,  and  she  dared  ask  none  now. 

"  I  do  hate  the  job,"  Evelyn  was  continuing, 
"  even  if  it  does  mean  a  few  bits  extra.  Rose  says 
that  fellow  Dyker  is  due  to-night.  She's  not  fit  to 
see  him  above  all  men,  and  he's  the  one  I  most  par 
ticularly  hate  to  meet,  because  he  was  a  friend  of 
my  friend  the  doctor  and  used  to  call  with  him  now 
and  again  at  my  flat.  I  always  fancy  he's  making 
comparisons  under  those  narsty  low  lids  of  his." 

Violet,  in  sudden  reaction,  felt  choking  with  de 
spair. 

"  I  could  see  him,"  she  said. 

But  Evelyn's  honors  sat  heavily  upon  their  pos 
sessor. 

"  You're  not  a  trusty  yet,  my  dear,  by  any  manner 
of  means,"  she  responded.  "No,  no;  you  will  go 
to  your  own  room  after  dinner  and  stay  there  till 
you  are  wanted." 

She  tilted  her  sharp  chin  and  strolled  kitchenward 
for  a  drink;  but,  though  she  left  behind  her  a  Violet 
discouraged,  it  was  not  a  Violet  beaten. 

In  fact,  the  girl  made  her  own  opportunity.    No- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         179 

ti'cing  that  evening  that  Evelyn  took  up  a  dignified 
position  in  the  parlor  and  had  Cassie  conduct  all 
the  guests  thither,  Violet  quickly  disposed  of  the  first 
person  that  claimed  her  attention,  and,  having  made 
her  best  toilet — having  restored  her  cheeks  to  a  re 
semblance  of  their  pristine  glow,  coiffed  her  russet 
hair,  and  donned  her  best  of  linen — she  descended 
quietly  to  the  first  landing  on  the  stairway,  there  to 
take  up  her  watch.  Before  she  was  again  in  demand, 
she  saw  the  servant  admit  Wesley  Dyker.  She  ran 
quickly  downward  and,  just  as  Cassie  stepped  for 
ward  to  precede  him,  brushed  by  him  in  the  rosy 
twilight  of  the  hall. 

"  Ask  to  see  me,"  she  whispered.  "  Ask  to  see 
Violet.  Don't  let  on  I  told  you.  I've  heard  some 
thing  you  want  to  know  about  O'Malley." 

Before  the  man's  shadowy  figure  could  come  to 
pause,  she  had  passed  him  and  caught  up  to  Cassie. 

"  Where  have  you  been?  "  she  asked.  "  I've  been 
calling  for  you  for  five  minutes.  I  need  some  more 
water  in  my  room." 

She  turned  and  reascended  the  stairs,  but  her  door 
had  not  long  been  closed  before  the  servant  was 
knocking  upon  the  panel. 

"  Here's  you'  water,  Miss  Vi'let,"  said  Cassie. 
"  An'  Miste'  Dyker  wants  fer  to  see  you  daown  in 
de  back  parlor." 

Violet  took  the  useless  pitcher,  made  sure  that  the 
remnant  of  Katie's  note  was  secure  in  its  hiding- 
place,  and  hurried,  with  Cassie  following,  to  the 
garish  room  in  which  Dyker  was  awaiting  her. 

He  was  seated  on  the  lazy,  pillowed  sofa  on  which 
Violet  had  fallen  asleep  so  soon  after  her  arrival  in 


i8o         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

this  house.  He  was  in  evening-clothes  that  served 
him,  on  the  East  Side,  much  as  the  advertised  por 
traits  of  certain  patent-medicine  makers  serve  their 
proprietors,  the  flaccid  whiteness  of  his  face  still 
bearing  traces  of  past  beauty,  the  weakness  of  his 
mouth  hidden  by  his  crisp,  short,  brown  mustache, 
and  his  heavy  lids  concealing  the  secret  of  his  steel- 
gray  eyes. 

He  half  rose  as  she  entered,  but  she  motioned  him 
to  sit  still. 

"  Hello !  "  she  said,  with  the  easy  manner  of  the 
house,  which  always  seemed  to  presuppose  a  previous 
acquaintance.  "Have  you  ordered  anything?  I'm 
terribly  dry." 

He  took  her  hand  and  caught  her  meaning. 

"  So  am  I,  Miss  Violet,"  he  answered.  "  Let's 
have  something." 

Violet  turned  to  the  servant. 

"  Cassie,"  she  said,  "  bring  up  a  couple  of  bottles." 

She  waited  for  the  door  to  close,  and  then  sat 
down  beside  Dyker. 

"  Speak  low,"  she  cautioned.  "  That  girl  will 
listen  if  she  can.  You'll  have  to  pretend  to  be  mak 
ing  love  to  me." 

Dyker  regarded  her  with  smiling  approval.  Her 
blue  eyes  shone  with  excitement  and  red  blood  fought 
through  the  rouge  on  cheek  and  fully  ripe  mouth. 

'  What  you  ask  will  be  both  easy  and  pleasant," 
he  answered. 

"  No,  no;  none  of  that.  This  is  no  time  for  bluff 
ing.  Put  your  arm  around  my  shoulder.  That  way. 
Now  then,  you  heard  what  I  told  you  in  the 
hall?" 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         181 

Dyker,  with  his  type's  disinclination  to  take  seri 
ously  anything  that  any  woman  has  to  say  upon  seri 
ous  matters,  smiled  assent. 

"  You  seem  to  have  been  doing  some  listening 
yourself,"  he  said,  as  his  fingers  tightened  unnec 
essarily  upon  her  shoulder. 

"  Yes,  I  did,  and  it's  lucky  for  you  I  did  it.  Will 
you  promise  not  to  give  me  away?  " 

"  Of  course  I  promise." 

"  Not  even  to  Miss  Rose?  " 

"  Not  even  to  Rosie." 

"  And  if  I  help  you,  will  you  do  me  a  favor?  " 

"  To  look  at  you  I  should  say  that  I'd  do  you 
any  favor  you  asked,  and  do  it  without  expecting 
anything  in  return." 

His  pale  lips  were  curled  in  a  half-scoffing  smile, 
but  Violet's  next  words  brushed  from  his  flaccid  face 
all  traces  of  amusement. 

"  You  remember  that  night  you  told  Miss  Rose 
about  what  you  wanted  to  get  at  the  next  election? 
You  said  you  were  afraid  of  O'Malley  giving  you 
the  double  cross." 

Dyker  stiffened. 

"  Did  you  hear  that?"  he  demanded. 

"  Hush !  Keep  your  voice  down,  or  I  won't  tell 
you  nothing  of  what  I  know.  Remember  you're  sup 
posed  to  be  making  love  to  me." 

"  All  right,  all  right;  but  I  want  an  answer  to  my 
question." 

"  Well,  then,  of  course,  I  heard  it.  I  was  at  the 
keyhole  there — that's  why  I  want  you  to  whisper 
now. — And  I  heard  more." 

"What  was  that?" 


1 82         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Wait  a  minute.  You'll  do  me  a  favor  if  I  tell 
you?" 

"Anything,"  he  smiled. 

"  But  this  is  business.  If  I  tell  you  something 
that  it's  worth  your  while  to  know,  will  you  promise 
not  to  blow  on  me  to  Miss  Rose?  " 

"  I  promise." 

"  And  to  do  something  more  that  I'll  ask  you?  " 

Wesley  was  now  certain  that  he  must  not  stick 
at  promises. 

"  Surely." 

"  Then  sit  tight.  I  don't  know  as  much  about 
O'Malley  as  I  pretended  out  there  in  the  hall,  but 
I  do  know  about  Miss  Rose.  I  don't  know  whether 
O'Malley  is  goin'  to  double-cross  you  or  not,  but 
I  do  know  that  Miss  Rose  has  given  you  the  double- 
cross  already." 

She  had  thought  that  passion  played  a  large  part 
in  his  relations  with  her  mistress,  and  she  had  counted 
upon  awakening  his  jealousy.  What,  however,  had 
far  exceeded  his  affection  was  a  poor  pride  of  posses 
sion,  and  when  Violet's  words,  in  addition  to  touch 
ing  his  ambition,  struck  at  that  pride,  they  aroused 
an  anger  that  was  far  more  dangerous  than  any 
sense  of  love  betrayed. 

"What's  that?"  he  demanded. 

Two  red  beacons  flashed  into  his  pale  checks,  and 
his  heavy  lids,  shooting  upward  for  a  single  instant, 
disclosed  hard,  gray  eyes  gone  hot  and  malevolent. 

"  Be  careful.  Speak  low,  I  tell  you,"  she  cau 
tioned;  "  and  remember  your  promise." 

"  I  don't  believe " 

"Here's  Cassie!" 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         183 

They  waited  while  the  black  opened  the  cham 
pagne  and  filled  the  glasses. 

Violet  brushed  Dyker's  hair  over  his  eyes  and 
laughed  at  the  effect.  Dyker  caught  the  offending 
hand  and  kissed  it  by  way  of  punishment. 

"  Cassie,"  he  banteringly  asked,  "  why  didn't  you 
ever  tell  me  there  was  such  a  nice  little  girl  in  this 
house?  I  had  to  get  the  news  from  a  friend  on  the 
outside." 

He  tossed  the  now  grinning  negress  a  dollar  and, 
as  soon  as  she  had  left  them,  dropped  the  farce  as 
promptly  as  did  Violet. 

"  I  say  I  can't  believe  you,"  he  resumed,  the  two 
spots  of  anger  still  glowering  in  his  cheeks. 

Violet  knew  that  her  whole  hope  rested  upon  her 
ability  to  force  conviction. 

"  You've  got  to  believe  me,"  she  said.  "  I'll  tell 
you  all  that  you  told  Miss  Rose  till  I  had  to  run 
away,  that  evening." 

She  did  it,  omitting  scarcely  a  particular. 

"That's  right,  ain't  it?"  she  concluded. 

"  May  be.  But  what  does  that  prove?  It  only 
shows  that  you  heard  me." 

"  It  shows  that  I  can  hear  Miss  Rose  when 
she  talks  to  somebody  else.  And  I  did  hear 
her." 

"Whom  was  she  talking  to?" 

"  The  man  you  asked  her  about.  To  Rafael  An- 
gelelli." 

"  Well,  but  I  told  her  to  talk  to  him." 

"  An'  she  did  it.  But  the  first  time  I  heard  her 
was  just  before  you  told  her  to." 

"That  same  night?" 


1 84         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  He  was  in  the  kitchen  with  her  when  you  came 
in.  Why,  he's  here  all  the  time !  I  don't  care  what 
she  pretends  to  you,  she's  stuck  on  him,  an'  every 
girl  in  the  house  knows  it." 

Rapidly,  but  as  fully  as  she  had  sketched  the  dia 
logue  between  Rose  and  Dyker,  she  now  described 
the  first  conversation  that  she  had  overheard  between 
her  mistress  and  the  Italian. 

"  I'd  come  down  to  graft  a  drink,"  she  said,  "  an' 
I  heard  them  from  the  stairs.  That's  how,  after 
he'd  left,  I  came  to  listen  to  you  too." 

Dyker  had  quailed  under  the  revelation,  thus  made 
to  him,  of  political  danger.  He  now  quivered  in 
anger  at  the  comments  upon  himself,  somewhat  col 
ored,  that  Violet  had  placed  in  the  mouths  of  Rose 
and  Angel. 

"  I'll  find  out  about  this !  "  he  said,  struggling 
against  the  desperate  arms  flung  swiftly  around  him 
to  keep  him  on  the  sofa.  "  Let  me  go !  By  God, 
I'll  have  that  drunken  cat  down  here  and  squeeze 
the  truth  out  of  her  throat !  " 

All  the  caution,  all  the  craft,  all  that  she  had 
counted  upon  as  the  real  Wesley  Dyker  seemed  to 
have  escaped  him.  His  voice  was  still  low,  but  in 
every  other  respect  he  was  a  raging  beast. 

She  fought  with  him,  mentally  and  physically. 

1  You  can't  get  anything  out  of  her  that  way," 
Violet  urged,  as  the  man  twisted  under  her  strong 
hands.  "  Of  course  she'll  say  it's  all  lies.  And 
you'd  only  be  warning  her.  You  don't  want  her  to 
know  that  you  know ;  you  want  a  chance  to  block  her 
game." 

Partly    convinced   by    this    argument    and    partly 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         185 

subdued  by  the  physical  restraint  that  accompanied 
it,  Dyker  ceased  his  struggles. 

"  But  I  want  to  be  sure,"  he  muttered  sullenly. 

"  You  can't  be  sure  by  goin'  to  Miss  Rose." 

"  Well,  I  ought  to  tell  her."  The  high  tide  of 
his  anger  was  slowly  subsiding,  and  the  rocky  Dyker 
that  she  had  built  on  was  beginning  to  show  its  crest 
above  the  still  hissing  waves.  "  Look  here,  Violet," 
he  said,  "  I'm  sorry  I  behaved  like  such  a  fool.  I 
beg  your  pardon,  but  you  must  see  that  I  have  got 
to  put  this  thing  up  to  Rose." 

"  You  forget  your  promise." 

"  No,  I  don't,  but  I  must  make  sure." 

Violet  thought  rapidly. 

"  Listen,"  she  said;  "  I  told  you  I  wanted  you  to 
do  something  for  me  an'  you  gave  your  word  you'd 
doit— Will  you?" 

"  Of  course  I  will,  only  I'm  thinking  a  little  about 
myself." 

"  This  will  help  you,  too." 

"What  do  you  want?" 

Violet  drew  a  long  breath. 

"  I  want  you  to  go  over  to  the  avenue  right 
away,"  she  said,  "  and  buy  me  a  long  cloak  and  a 
hat  and  bring  them  back,  and  then  take  me  out  of 
here  without  a  word  to  anybody.  You  needn't  walk 
more'n  three  squares  with  me,  an'  then  I  won't  bother 
you  no  more." 

Dyker  drew  away  and  whistled  softly.  His  face 
grew  quite  composed  again.  The  heavy  lids  fell 
over  his  eyes. 

"  So  that's  it,  is  it?  "  he  asked. 

"  I  want  to  get  away,"  said  Violet, 


1 86         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  And  so  you've  cooked  up  this  little  mess  of  lies 
to  make  me  the  goat,  eh?  " 

Violet  felt  the  sands  slipping  beneath  her  feet. 
She  laced  her  fingers  together  till  the  knuckles  bruised 
her  flesh. 

"Don't  do  that,"  she  pleaded;  "don't  take  it 
that  way;  it's  true,  what  I  told  you,  every  word  of 
it.  I  only  want  you  to  keep  your  promise  to  me." 

She  stopped  with  a  sob,  and  waited. 

Wesley  reached  calmly  for  a  glass  of  wine,  drank 
it,  put  down  the  glass,  thrust  his  hands  deep  into 
his  trousers'  pockets,  and,  stretching  out  his  long 
legs,  regarded,  humming,  the  toes  of  his  shining 
pumps. 

"  I  don't  believe  you,"  he  said  at  last. 

"  But,  Mr.  Dyker " 

"  It's  too  thin." 

"  Even  if  it  was  a  lie,"  Violet  despairingly  per 
sisted,  "  you  ought  to  help  me.  Do  you  know  who 
I  am?" 

"  That's  the  point." 

"  Do  you  know  how  I  was  brought  here?  " 

"  I  can  guess." 

"  I  was  tricked.  The  man  said  he  wanted  to 
marry  me.  I  didn't  know.  I  believed  him.  An' 
they  beat  me  an'  starved  me  and  did  things  I  couldn't 
think  about  an'  couldn't  help  thinkin'  about.  An' 
all  I  want  is  just  for  you  to  do  me  this  one  little 
favor.  I  won't  bother  you.  I  won't  blow  on 
you " 

"What's  that?" 

"  Oh,  you  know  I  wouldn't  blow  on  you  I  I 
couldn't.  I  want  to  forget  the  whole  thing.  I've 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         187 

got  friends  to  go  to  who'll  get  me  work.  I  only 
want  you  to  get  me  out  of  the  door  and  safe 
away." 

Like  most  men  of  his  sort  Dyker,  although  ready 
enough  to  make  a  living  out  of  the  results  of  cruelty, 
hated  the  sight  of  cruelty's  self.  The  girl's  words 
touched,  though  lightly,  his  selfish  heart. 

"  But  I  can't  afford  to  help  you,"  he  protested. 
"  You  see  how  I'm  tied  up  here.  I  can't  have  Rose 
jump  on  me  now." 

"  You  know  she's  jumping  on  you  already.  You 
know  she's  knifing  you  in  the  back.  The  only  way 
you  can  stop  her  is  by  using  what  I've  told  you." 

"  Of  course,"  said  Dyker  in  the  tone  of  a  man 
thinking  aloud,  "  if  she  really  was  playing  both  ends 
against  the  middle,  I  could  pull  her  teeth  by  going 
straight  to  O'Malley  and  telling  him  so." 

Violet  did  not  wholly  understand  this,  but  she 
agreed  immediately. 

"  Of  course  you  could,"  she  said. 

"  And  I  suppose  I  could  have  her  pinched  then, 
if  you'd  testify  against  her.  Would  you  do  that? 
Would  you  go  into  court?" 

Violet's  fingers  closed  spasmodically. 

"  Just  give  me  the  chanc't,"  she  said  fervently. 

"  And  of  course  there  are  other  girls  who've  been 
in  the  same  scrape  here?  " 

"  There's  a  new  one  upstairs  this  minute." 

"  There  is?  Urn.  That's  good."  He  rattled  the 
money  in  his  pocket.  "  Only,  look  here,"  he  per 
sisted,  "  if  you  have  been  telling  the  truth,  it  will 
probably  make  me  solid  with  O'Malley,  but  if  you 
haven't,  I'll  go  clean  to  smash." 


1 88         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Violet  saw  the  turn  of  affairs  and,  with  hope's 
revival,  her  mind  cleared  immediately. 

"  I  haven't  told  you  all,"  she  said,  "  and  I  guess 
the  rest  will  make  you  sure  enough." 

"There's  more  then?" 

"  A  lot." 

"What  is  it?" 

"  Will  you  help  me  out  of  here?  " 

"  If  you  convince  me. — Let's  see;  the  shops  around 
here  are  still  open. — Yes,  if  you  convince  me,  you'll 
be  out  of  here  in  half  an  hour." 

It  was  her  only  chance.  She  did  not  hesitate. 
She  told  him  the  whole  of  what  she  had  heard  of 
the  later  assuring  interview  between  Rose  and  An- 
gelelli. 

This  time  he  listened  quietly,  his  face  inscrutable. 
'  That  all?  "  he  asked  when  she  had  ended. 

"  That's  all,"  she  said. 

"It's  the  truth?" 

"Ain't  I  sayin'  it  proof  that  it's  true?  How 
could  I  make  it  up?  I  don't  know1  all  that  it  means." 

"  You  knew  enough  to  pass  it  on  to  me." 

"  Lucky  for  you  I  did,  too;  but  I  don't  know  all 
it  means — how  could  I  ? — and  you  do  know,  an'  that 
ought  to  be  proof  enough  that  it's  God's  truth,  Mr. 
Dyker." 

She  stopped.    Her  case  was  with  the  jury. 

Dyker  rose. 

"  Cassie !  "  he  called. 

Violet  leaped  to  her  feet  and  laid  her  hands  on 
his  arm. 

'  What  are  you  goin'  to  do?  "  she  whispered. 

He  silenced  her  with  a  gesture. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         189 

"  What  you  want,"  he  said. 

Cassie  put  her  black  head  in  at  the  door. 

"  Cassie,"  he  continued,  flipping  the  maid  another 
dollar,  "  I'm  a  little  off  my  feed.  I'm  going  to  the 
drugstore  on  the  corner  and  get  fixed  up." 

"  Thank  you,  Miste'  Dyker. — Ah  kin  go  fer  you, 
Miste'  Dyker,"  said  the  negress.  "  Thank  you, 
sah." 

"  No,  thanks,  Cassie,  I  can  go  myself;  I  want  the 
air.  But  you  can  do  something  else  for  me.  You 
can  just  not  let  this  girl  run  away  from  me.  I  know 
she  would  run  if  she  could,  but  I  like  her  too  well 
to  let  her,  so  if  anybody  wants  her,  just  you  say 
she's  in  here  and  engaged  for  the  evening  by  me. 
I'll  be  back  in  fifteen  minutes." 

He  left  one  door  as  the  willingly  assenting  Cassie 
closed  the  other,  and  Violet  flung  herself  on  the  sofa 
and  buried  her  face  in  the  cushions,  now  fearful  that 
the  servant,  notwithstanding  their  precautions,  had 
overheard  her,  now  afraid  that  Dyker  would  change 
his  purpose  and  fail  to  return,  and  again  dreading 
that  he  might  betray  her  to  Rose.  Since  the  night 
she  had  waited  for  Max  to  telephone  in  the  cafe, 
since  the  terrible  morning  that  had  followed,  it  was 
the  longest  quarter  of  an  hour  that  she  had  known, 
but  it  at  last  dragged  its  quivering  length  away. 
The  doorbell  rang.  Cassie  passed  through  the  room 
to  find  Violet  sitting  suddenly  upright,  and  at  once 
returned  with  Dyker,  his  summer  raincoat  tossed 
across  his  arm. 

As  the  servant  left  them,  he  lifted  the  coat.  Be 
low  it,  not  wrapped  in  the  paper  usual  to  a  new 
purchase,  was  a  dark  cloak.  He  unrolled  it,  uncov- 


i9o         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

ered  a  beaver  hat,  and  handed  them  both  to  the  pant 
ing  Violet. 

"  Here  you  are,"  he  said  quietly. 

She  seized  them  and  began  to  put  them  on. 

"  No,"  he  cautioned,  "  on  second  thought,  I  guess 
I'd  better  carry  them.  The  parlor  door's  open,  and 
Evelyn  and  Fritzie  are  in  there  with  a  couple  of  men. 
I'll  go  ahead  and  open  the  vestibule  door  and  the 
front  door.  Then  you  come  by  as  if  you  were  going 
upstairs." 

"  Evelyn'll  come  out  to  see  if  I  have  any  money." 

"  She'll  never  learn  that,  though  here,  by  the  way, 
is  a  ten-dollar  bill  that  will  come  in  handy. — The 
doors  will  be  open  and  I'll  be  on  the  pavement. 
Keep  only  a  yard  behind  me.  Riley's  at  the  other 
end  of  his  beat,  and  I  have  a  cab  at  the  curb. 
Ready?" 

She  could  not  speak,  but  she  nodded  her  russet 
head. 

He  passed  before  her  up  the  rosy  twilight  of  the 
hall. 

Violet,  following,  her  lips  tight,  her  breathing 
suspended,  her  heart  pounding  against  her  breast, 
was  dimly  aware  of  her  own  soft  footfalls  sounding 
hideously  loud,  of  the  blast  of  light  and  laughter 
from  the  parlor. 

Dyker  flung  wide  the  vestibule  door. 

"  Good-night !  "  he  called  to  Evelyn. 

"Going?  Good-night!"  Violet  heard  the  Eng 
lishwoman  answer. 

She  heard  Evelyn  rise.  She  heard  the  front  door 
open.  She  saw  Wesley  raise  his  arm. 

She  hurried  by  the  parlor  door,  and  then,  instead 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         191 

of  turning  to  the  stairs,  gathered  up  her  red  kimona 
and  ran  through  the  vestibule,  through  a  patch  of 
soft,  fresh  darkness,  and  was  tossed  precipitately 
into  a  cab  into  which  Dyker  followed  her  just  as  the 
horse,  under  a  quick  blow,  dashed  madly  up  the 
street. 

At  the  open  cab-window  the  night  air  beat  upon 
her  fevered  face.  She  drank  it  deep  into  her  thirst 
ing  lungs.  It  was  the  wine  of  freedom. 


XIV 

RIVINGTON  STREET 

THE  eastern  end  of  Rivington  Street  is  a  hectic 
thoroughfare.  Often  it  is  so  hectic  as  to  be 
no  thoroughfare  at  all,  but  only  a  tossing 
fever-dream,  a  whirling  phantasmagoria  of  noisy 
shadows,  grotesque  and  reasonless.  It  seems  a  street 
with  a  bad  conscience,  for  it  never  sleeps. 

The  dawn,  even  in  summertime,  hesitates  long  be 
fore  it  comes  shivering  up  from  the  crowded  East 
River  to  drop  a  few  grudged  rays  of  anaemic  light 
on  Rivington  Street.  Already,  out  of  the  humming 
courts,  the  black  alleys,  and  the  foul  passages  that 
feed  this  avenue  as  gutters  feed  a  sewer,  a  long 
funeral  procession  of  little  handcarts  has  groped  its 
way  and  taken  a  mournful  stand  beside  the  fetid 
curbs;  and  soon,  pausing  at  these  carts  to  buy  the 
rank  morsels  of  breakfast  that  there  is  never  time 
to  eat  at  home,  the  gray  army  of  the  workers  begins 
to  scurry  westward. 

First  come  the  market-laborers,  with  shoulders 
bowed  and  muscles  cramped  from  the  bearing  of 
many  burdens.  Upon  their  heels  march  the  pale 
conscripts  of  the  sweatshops,  their  hands  shaking, 
their  cheeks  sunken,  their  eyes  hot  from  loss  of  sleep. 
Follow  the  sad-lipped  factory-girls,  women  before 
their  time,  old  women  before  their  youth,  and  then 
the  long  line  of  predestined  shop-clerks,  most  of  them 

192 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE"        193 

still  in  short  skirts  and  all  of  them,  befittingly,  in 
mourning-black.  Swiftly  they  go,  the  whole  corps 
of  them,  the  whole  corps  strangely  silent. 

The  street  is  not  emptied  of  them  before  it  is 
filled  again,  now  by  solemn  children  on  their  way 
to  school,  children  whose  gaze  is  fixed,  whose  mouths 
are  maturely  set,  and  whose  voices,  when  they  are 
heard  at  all,  are  high,  strident,  nervous.  As  these 
go  by,  the  shops  begin  to  do  business :  the  cheap  food- 
shops,  the  old-clothes  shops,  the  shops  that  sell  sec 
ond-hand  five-cent  novels  for  a  copper,  and  the  pawn 
brokers'.  The  shawl-hooded  housewives  clutter  in 
and  out,  selling  first  that  they  may  buy  afterward, 
and  continuing  like  ants  swarming  about  an  ant-hill 
until  noon  strikes  and  the  children  parade  stolidly 
away  from  school  for  luncheon,  and  back  again. 

At  that  hour  the  underworld  of  Rivington  Street 
enough  recovers  from  its  drunkenness  of  the  night 
preceding  to  stagger  forth  and  drink  again.  The 
doors  of  the  shouldering  saloons  swing  open  and 
bang  shut  in  a  running  accompaniment,  and  the  high 
way  rocks  with  it  until  a  cloud  of  clattering  two- 
wheeled  push-carts  swoops  from  "  The  Push-Cart 
Garage  "  around  the  corner  and  alights  as  if  it  were 
a  plague  of  pestilent  flies.  Bearded  Jews  propel 
these,  Jews  with  shining  derbies  far  back  upon  their 
heads,  who  work  sometimes  for  themselves,  but  more 
often  for  the  owners  of  the  push-cart  trust,  who 
squabble  for  positions  in  the  gutter  where  an  im 
potent  law  forbids  any  of  them  long  to  remain,  but 
where,  once  entrenched,  they  stand  for  hours,  selling 
stockings  at  five  cents  and  shirts  at  ten,  mirrors  and 
vegetables,  suspenders  and  lithographs,  shoestrings 


i94        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

and  picture-postcards,  collars  of  linen  and  celluloid, 
all  sorts  of  cheap  dress-material,  every  description 
of  brush,  fruit,  and  cigar-butts. 

The  carts  are  end-to-end  now;  one  could  walk 
upon  them  from  cross-street-  to  cross-street.  Each 
has  its  separate  gasoline  torch  leaping  up,  in  flame 
and  smoke,  to  the  descending  darkness.  Upon  them 
charge  the  returning  army  of  workers.  The  crowd 
is  all  moving  eastward;  you  could  not  make  six  yards 
of  progress  to  the  west;  the  sidewalks  overflow,  the 
street  is  filled.  The  silence  of  the  morning  has 
changed  to  a  mad  chorus  of  discords.  The  thousand 
weary  feet  shuffle,  the  venders  shriek  their  wares; 
there  is  every  imaginable  sound  of  strife  and  traffic, 
but  there  is  no  distinguishable  note  of  mirth.  Wag 
ons  jostle  pedestrians,  graze  children,  are  blocked, 
held  up,  turned  away.  The  thoroughfare  is  like  a 
boiling  cauldron;  it  can  hold  no  more,  and  still  it 
must  hold  more  and  more. 

Only  very  slowly,  as  the  night  wears  on,  do  the 
crowd  and  noise  lessen;  but  at  last,  by  tardy  degrees, 
they  do  lessen.  Imperceptibly,  but  inevitably,  even 
this  portion  of  New  York  breathes  somewhat  easier. 
By  twos  and  threes  the  people  melt  away;  a  note 
at  a  time,  the  cries  weaken  and  the  shuffling  dies; 
and  finally,  in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  Riv- 
ington  Street  turns  over,  with  a  troubled  sigh,  to 
a  restless  doze. 

But  to  doze  only.  Its  bad  conscience  will  grant 
it  no  absolute  oblivion,  no  perfect  rest,  however  brief. 
Cats  yell  from  the  dizzy  edges  of  the  lower  roofs; 
dogs  howl  from  the  doorsteps.  Back  in  the  narrow 
courts  and  alleys  and  passages,  drunken  battles  are 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         195 

won  and  lost.  The  elevated  cars  roar  out  the  minutes 
through  the  nocturnal  distances.  An  ambulance 
clangs  into  a  byway  street.  A  patrol-wagon  clatters 
past.  Rivington  Street  turns  and  tosses  on  its  hot 
couch,  and  through  its  dreams  slink  hideous  shadows 
that  dare  not  show  themselves  by  day.  One,  ten,  a 
hundred,  each  alone,  they  come  and  go:  vague,  in 
human.  And  then,  reluctantly,  the  hesitant  dawn 
creeps  shivering  out  of  the  East  River,  and  the  weary 
day  begins  again. 

Into  this  street — into  its  noisiest  quarter  at  its 
noisiest  time — the  cab  that  bore  Violet  on  her  way 
to  liberty  at  last  turned  and  proceeded  as  far  under 
the  flaring  gasoline  torches  as  the  evening  crowd  of 
workers,  buyers,  and  sellers,  would  permit.  The  girl, 
through  the  dark  thoroughfares  that  had  preceded 
it,  had  answered  a  score  of  questions,  which  Dyker 
had  asked  her,  the  fever  of  escape  beating  high  in 
her  breast  and  tossing  ready  replies  to  her  heated 
lips ;  but  now,  in  the  roar  and  brilliance  of  Rivington 
Street's  nocturnal  traffic,  there  had  come  upon  her 
a  terror  almost  equal  to  that  which  had  assailed  her 
when,  with  Max  for  her  guide,  the  lighted  length 
of  East  Fourteenth  Street  had  first  unrolled  itself 
before  her.  The  city  was  again  an  inimical  monster 
awaiting  her  descent  from  the  cab,  and  the  newly 
acquired  habit  of  seclusion,  the  habit  of  the  prisoner, 
recoiled  upon  her.  Freedom  was  strange;  it  became 
awesome,  and  when  the  horse  was  stopped  and  Violet 
knew  that  she  must  soon  fare  alone,  she  cowered  in 
a  corner,  breathing  hard. 

"  Can't  go  no  furder,  boss,"  said  the  cabby,  lean 
ing  far  around  from  his  seat.  "  Where  to  now?  " 


196         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Nowhere  right  away,"  answered  Dyker.  "  Just 
stand  where  you  are  for  a  minute." 

Then  he  turned  to  Violet. 

"  Now,"  he  said,  not  unkindly,  "  I'm  afraid  I'll 
have  to  drop  you  here.  It  wouldn't  do  for  me  to 
figure  publicly  as  an  active  agent  in  this  case,  you 
know.  But  you  needn't  worry.  Just  get  out  and 
walk  to  the  next  corner.  Turn  to  your  right,  take 
the  next  cross-street  to  your  left,  go  up  the  first  nar 
row  street  you  come  to,  and  your  friend's  house 
ought  to  be  about  the  third  in  the  row.  It  will  be  a 
little  dark,  but  you  won't  have  any  trouble  finding  it." 

Violet  hesitated. 

"  I  hope  I  won't,"  she  said. 

"  Surely  not.  If  you  have,  just  ask  the  way  of 
the  first  policeman  you  see." 

"  Not  a  policeman,  Mr.  Dyker!  " 

"  Of  course,  a  policeman.  He  won't  hurt  you 
as  long  as  you  keep  your  cloak  tight.  Now,  you're 
sure  you've  given  me  the  right  address?" 

"  I  gave  you  the  one  the  man  gave  me." 

"  Yes,  but  I  mean  you're  not  lying  to  me?  " 

Violet's  wide  eyes  should  have  been  sufficient  de 
nial. 

"  Why  would  I  do  that?  "  she  asked. 

"  That's  so;  only  I  thought — well,  I  beg  your  par 
don,  Violet.  You  have  my  office-address  on  that 
card.  I'll  send  for  you  in  a  day  or  two — be  sure 
to  be  home  every  afternoon — and  then  we'll  fix 
Madame  Rose  with  the  District-Attorney. — Good- 
by.  Sure  you're  not  afraid?  " 

Her  gratitude  would  not  permit  her  to  acknowl 
edge  fear. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         197 

"  Not  afraid,"  she  smiled,  rather  grimly. 

"Then  remember:  the  first  street  to  your  right, 
the  next  to  your  left,  and  then  to  your  right  again — 
third  or  fourth  house  in  the  row." 

He  opened  the  cab-door  and  alighted,  holding  out 
his  hand. 

She  straightened  her  beaver  hat,  drew  the  folds 
of  her  dark  cloak  tightly  over  the  betraying  crimson 
of  her  kimona,  and,  helped  by  his  grasp,  followed 
him  to  the  swarming  curb. 

"  I — I  don't  know  how  to  thank  you,"  she  said. 

"  Then  don't  try,"  returned  Dyker,  laughing 
easily.  "  You  can  make  it  all  right  with  me  when 
you  testify  against  Rose." 

She  kept  his  hand  a  moment  longer,  partly  in  fear 
of  the  human  multitude  about  her  and  partly  in 
genuine  gratitude. 

"  But  I  do  thank  you,"  she  said. 

Dyker,  not  too  well  liking  the  white  light  of  pub 
licity  in  which  this  little  scene  was  being  enacted, 
pressed  her  hand  and  dropped  it. 

"That's  all  right,"  he  responded.  "Just  don't 
forget  your  promise."  He  stepped  back  into  the 
cab.  "  Good-by,  and  good  luck,"  he  said. 

"  Good-by,"  he  heard  her  answer,  and  then,  with 
his  head  out  of  the  cab-window,  he  saw  her  pause 
bewilderedly.  "  To  your  right,"  he  cautioned. 

He  watched  her  turn.  He  saw  her  plunge  into  the 
crowd.  He  saw  the  crowd  swallow  her  up. 

;'  Take  me  over  to  my  office,"  he  ordered  the 
driver,  and  added  his  address. 

Once  there,  he  dismissed  the  cab,  climbed  the  steps 
of  what  seemed  an  old  and  modest  little  house,  and, 


198         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

opening  the  door  and  turning  into  the  front  room, 
lit  a  gas-jet  the  flame  of  which  revealed  an  apartment 
surprisingly  new  and  arrogant.  The  walls  were 
lined  with  new  bookcases  holding  rows  of  new  law- 
books,  and  surrounded  by  rows  of  new  chairs.  The 
flat-top  desk  in  the  center,  at  which  his  stenographer 
sat  by  daylight,  was  a  new  desk,  with  new  wire- 
baskets  upon  it,  and  a  new  telephone,  to  which  Dyker 
now  immediately  proceeded  and  called  a  number. 

"  Hello,"  he  said  into  the  transmitter,  adopting 
the  low  tone  that  he  always  used  in  his  wired  con 
versations.  "  Is  that  Schleger's? — It  is? — That  you, 
Ludwig? — This  is  Dyker. — Yes,  good-evening,  Lud- 
wig. — Yes,  pretty  good,  thank  you.  How  are  you, 
and  how's  business? — That's  good.  Mrs.  Schleger 
and  the  babies  all  right? — I'll  bet  that  boy's  gained 
three  pounds ! — He  has  ?  I'm  glad  to  hear  it. 
You're  a  wonder. — Yes. — That's  what  I  said.  And, 
say,  Ludwig,  is  O'Malley  anywhere  around? — He 
isn't? — Hasn't  been  in  this  evening? — Oh!  Well, 
I  wonder  where  I  can  find  him. — You  don't?  Per 
haps  he's  at  Dugan's  place. — No,  it's  not  anything 
important:  I  just  wanted  to  take  a  drink  with  him, 
that's  all.  He's  sure  to  be  at  Dugan's  or  Venturio's, 
but  I  guess  I  won't  bother.  Ever  so  much  obliged, 
Ludwig. — Good-by." 

In  spite  of  his  word,  Dyker  did,  however,  bother. 
He  called  three  other  numbers  in  his  quest  of  the 
political  boss,  and  when  he  found  him,  the  underling 
made  a  pressing  appointment  for  an  important  con 
ference  on  the  next  morning,  though  what  it  was  that 
he  wanted  then  to  discuss  he  carefully  neglected  to 
mention  over  a  telephone-wire. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         199 

He  hung  up  the  receiver  in  a  glow  of  satisfaction. 

"  And  now,"  he  said,  "  I  think  I'll  get  away  for 
the  night.  I  don't  care  to  have  any  arguments  with 
Rose  for  a  day  or  two." 

Yet,  even  as  he  said  it,  the  telephone-bell  uttered 
its  staccato  summons.  He  stood  uncertainly  beside 
the  desk. 

"  She  wouldn't  have  the  nerve  to  use  the  wire," 
he  argued.  "  Perhaps  it's  O'Malley  with  more  to 
say." 

Again  the  bell  rang,  and  his  curiosity  overcame 
his  caution.  He  took  up  the  receiver. 

"  Hello !  "  he  said  sharply,  and  then  his  tone 
mellowed,  for  the  voice  that  came  to  him  across  the 
hurrying  New  York  night  was  the  voice  of  Marian 
Lennox. 

"  Is  that  Mr.  Dyker's  office?  "  it  asked. 

"  It  is  the  head  of  the  firm  himself,"  he  answered, 
"  and  mighty  glad  to  hear  from  you." 

"  I  am  glad  you're  glad,"  the  voice  pursued,  "  be 
cause  I  want  to  ask  a  favor." 

"  It  is  as  good  as  performed.    What  is  it?  " 

"  I  have  been  down  town,  and  remained  longer 
than  I  intended,  and  I  want  you,  please,  to  take 
me  home." 

"  I  thought  you  were  asking  a  favor,  not  bestow 
ing  one.  Where  are  you?  " 

"  At  the  settlement." 

"  In  Rivington  Street?  "  Wesley  set  his  teeth  as 
he  asked  it. 

"  Yes." 
'  Very  well,  I'll  be  over  right  away." 

He  rang  off  and  left  the  office.     He  was  sorry 


200         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

that  he  had  dismissed  the  cab,  for  he  expected  to 
need  it  when  he  reached  the  first  stage  of  his  journey; 
but  the  way  was  not  long  to  the  place  that  Marian 
had  named,  and,  even  had  it  been  twice  as  far  to 
the  settlement,  Dyker,  who  walked  thither  with  the 
feet  of  chagrin,  would  not  have  remarked  the  dis 
tance. 

In  the  midst  of  Rivington  Street,  in  a  house  that 
used,  long  ago,  to  be  a  Methodist  parsonage,  a  little 
group  of  devoted  women  are  doing  their  best  to  re 
deem,  by  social  activities,  the  people  of  the  neighbor 
hood  from  the  benighted  condition  in  which  the  peo 
ple's  lot  is  cast.  This  best  has  now  been  done  for 
more  years  than  a  few,  and  the  people,  still  consider 
ing  it  necessary  to  remain  alive,  and  still  knowing 
that  to  remain  alive  they  must  submit  to  the  economic 
system  imposed  upon  them,  continue  discouragingly 
unredeemed.  But  the  devoted  women,  though  they 
neglect  the  disease  for  its  symptoms,  persist  as  only 
feminine  natures  can  persist. 

They  are  college-bred  women  with  the  limitations 
and  emancipations  of  their  class;  and  they  have  a 
great  deal  to  occupy  their  attention  besides  their 
essays  in  social  entertainment.  For  the  most  part 
they  pass  their  days  in  really  practical  investigation. 
One  of  them  will  inspect  the  public  schools  and  im 
partially  consider  curricula  and  ventilation.  Another 
will  visit  tenements  and  ask  housewives  personal  ques 
tions  for  the  tabular  benefit  of  the  Russell  Sage 
Foundation.  A  third  goes  into  the  laundries  of  the 
best  hotels  and  finds  that  these  hostelries  force  their 
washerwomen  to  sleep  twenty  in  a  room.  Yet,  when 
they  return  to  Rivington  Street,  these  daylight  in- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         201 

vestigators  spur  their  wearied  nerves  to  further  exer 
tion  and  go  forward,  not  to  teach  the  toilers  the 
practical  cause  and  remedy  of  the  economic  evil,  but 
to  form  the  boys  and  girls,  the  young  women  and 
young  men,  into  reading  groups,  debating  clubs,  sew* 
ing  circles,  cooking  classes,  and  elocutionary  juntas. 
Their  zeal  is  boundless,  their  martyrdom  sadly  genu* 
ine,  and,  if  there  is  humor,  there  is  something  more 
than  humor  in  their  ultimate  complaint : 

"  Some  of  our  people  we  retain,  but  most  of  them 
slip  away,  and,  even  with  the  best  of  fortune,  we 
seem,  somehow,  able  to  do  so  little." 

Dyker  knew  the  place  by  reputation.  He  had 
always  scorned  it  for  its  own  sake,  and  now  he  had 
come  to  hate  it  for  Marian's.  For  want  of  a  better 
term,  it  may  be  repeated  that  he  was  in  love  with 
Marian.  Moreover,  he  wished  the  assistance  that 
an  early  marriage  with  the  daughter  of  a  wealthy 
department-store  owner  would  give  him  in  the  com 
ing  campaign.  And,  finally,  his  peculiar  legal  activi 
ties  were  already  well  enough  known  on  the  East 
Side  to  make  it  probable  that  any  young  woman 
entering  the  settlement  would  speedily  learn  of 
them. 

After  the  night  of  the  opera  his  cooler  reflection 
had  rejected  Marian's  plan  of  joining  the  Rivington 
Street  colony  as  a  fervently  girlish  dream  destined  to 
fade  before  the  reality  of  action.  He  had  decided 
that  the  best  way  to  aid  its  dissipation  was  no  longer 
to  combat  it,  and  he  had  even,  during  the  months  that 
had  followed,  seen  Marian  but  rarely,  and  never 
alone.  Occupied  with  politics  and  knowing  the  tacti 
cal  value  of  restraint,  he  had  not  so  much  as  pressed 


202         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

his  wooing.  He  had  relied  upon  what  he  chose  to 
describe  as  his  sweetheart's  basic  commonsense  to 
work  out  their  common  salvation,  and  had  decided 
that,  this  commonsense  being  what  he  esteemed  it, 
Marian  was  a  woman  more  likely  to  be  won  by  a 
Fabian  campaign  than  by  a  Varric  attack. 

The  point  wherein  these  calculations  erred  was 
their  underestimation  of  the  momentum  of  a  girlish 
impulse.  That  method  of  consideration  which  makes 
one  slow  to  reach  convictions  works  beyond  the  con 
victions  and  retards  one  from  action  upon  them,  once 
they  are  achieved,  but  the  impulsive  mind  that  bolts 
a  creed  unmasticated  straightway  drives  its  owner, 
in  the  creed's  behalf,  to  the  thumbscrews  or  the 
wrack.  It  is  from  the  pods  of  half-baked  opinions 
that  there  is  shaken  the  seed  of  the  church:  Marian 
meant  to  keep  to  her  purpose. 

Perhaps  Wesley's  silence  and  the  subtle  sense  of 
pique  that  it  awakened  played  a  part  in  this;  per 
haps  the  purpose  was  self-sufficient;  but,  in  either 
case,  Marian  missed  scarcely  an  evening  at  the  settle 
ment.  Two  of  her  former  classmates  were  knee- 
deep  in  the  work  there,  and  what  she  saw  and  what 
they  told  her  served  only  to  confirm  her.  It  thus 
happened  that,  anxious  again  to  see  him  alone, 
and  more  anxious  to  let  him  know  the  endurance 
of  her  resolution,  she  had,  on  this  evening,  tele 
phoned  on  the  chance  of  finding  him  late  at  his 
office. 

"  Good  heavens !  "  he  gasped  as  she  met  him  at 
the  settlement's  door.  "  What  on  earth  are  you  do 
ing  in  this  part  of  town  at  this  hour  of  the  night? 
Let  me  'phone  for  a  taxi." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         203 

What,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  she  had  been  doing 
was  to  listen  to  slim  little  Luigi  Malatesta  and  fat 
little  Morris  Binderwitz  respectively  attacking  and 
defending  the  proposition  that  Abraham  Lincoln  was 
a  greater  American  than  George  Washington;  but 
what  she  thought  she  had  been  doing  was  assisting 
in  raising  the  lower  half  of  society.  Under  this 
impression,  her  fine  brown  eyes  shone  with  the  con 
sciousness  of  moral  rectitude,  her  mouth  was  even 
more  than  usually  firm,  and  her  head  even  more  than 
usually  like  some  delicate  cameo. 

"  One  thing  at  a  time,  please,"  she  imperturbably 
answered.  "  First,  no  taxicab.  It  isn't  far  to  Second 
Avenue,  which  is  quiet  enough,  and  I  want  to  walk 
for  a  few  blocks." 

She  took  the  arm  that  he  grimly  offered,  and  he 
began  to  break  his  way  through  the  noisy  crowd 
under  the  flaring  gasoline  lamps  of  the  push-carts. 
Coherent  conversation  was  at  first  impossible,  but 
Dyker  felt  a  glow  of  pride  as,  with  her  fingers  closed 
in  tight  trust  upon  him,  he  shouldered  a  passage  for 
her,  and  Marian  herself  was  not  insusceptible  to  the 
thrill  inherent  in  the  situation.  Nevertheless,  the 
girl,  as  soon  as  they  had  turned  northward,  reverted 
to  her  former  attitude;  and  the  man,  knowing  well 
that  all  this  meant  that  she  was  still  determined  upon 
a  course  necessarily  delaying  his  wooing  and  perhaps 
resulting  in  his  discovery,  frankly  resumed  his  opposi 
tion.  He  did  more  and  worse:  he  swept  aside  all 
his  method  of  silence,  all  his  plans  of  conquest 
through  non-resistance. 

"  Now,  he  said,  continuing  their  interrupted 
talk,  "  I  should  really  like  to  know  what  you,  of 


204         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

all  people  in  the  world,  were  doing  on  Rivington 
Street." 

"  I  was  there,"  she  announced  serenely,  "  because 
I  have  made  up  my  mind  that  it  is  I,  of  all  people 
in  the  world,  who  ought  to  be  there." 

"  Marian," — he  almost  stopped  as  he  said  it — 
"  are  you  really  in  earnest  about  this  fancy?  Do  you 
honestly  mean  that  you  are  seriously  considering  any 
such  chimerical  course?" 

He  had,  naturally,  chosen  precisely  the  tone  that, 
were  any  additional  incentive  required,  would  have 
compelled  her  to  resolution.  Her  mind,  as  it  chanced, 
was,  however,  made  up,  and  what  he  now  said  served 
only  to  turn  her  toward  that  feminine  logic  which 
assumes  as  done  that  which  is  determined. 

"  I  am  past  consideration,"  she  said.  "  I  have 
already  virtually  begun." 

"  Marian  1     You're  joking." 

"  I  am  simply  stating  a  fact.  Why  do  you  sup 
pose  I  have  been  staying  in  town  this  summer?  I 
begin  my  real  work  at  the  settlement  with  the  first 
of  next  week." 

Her  classmates  in  Rivington  Street,  could  they 
have  heard  this,  would  have  been  pleased,  but  they 
would  also  have  been  surprised.  Nevertheless,  she 
at  once  mentally  decided  to  make  good  her  declara 
tion. 

In  the  darkness  Dyker  bit  the  lip  that,  under  his 
short,  crisp  mustache,  trembled  with  vexation. 

"You  really  mean  that?" 

She  bowed  a  brief  assent. 

"  Then  what,  if  you  please,  do  you  propose  to  do 
when  you  get  there?  " 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         205 

As  to  that  Marian  found  herself  suddenly  certain. 

"  You  ought  to  know,"  she  said,  "  how  these  peo 
ple  are  living;  you  ought  to  know  how  the  girls — 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  them — are  every  week 
going  into  lives  of  shame  and  death.  I  mean  to 
do  what  I  can  to  stop  them." 

It  would  have  been  a  hard  thing  for  her  to  say 
to  him  had  he  not  wrought  upon  her  anger,  and  had 
not  the  freshness  of  her  partial  glimpse  of  earth's 
lower  seven-eighths  fired  her  heart  with  a  blind  in 
spiration.  She  had  the  partial  vision  that  makes 
the  martyr:  a  vision  that  shows  just  enough  of  an 
evil  to  confirm  the  necessity  of  action  and  not  enough 
to  prove  how  little  individual  action  individually  di 
rected  can  be  worth. 

For  the  second  time  Wesley  gasped.  Here  were 
depths  in  her  of  which  he  had  not  dreamed,  and 
because  he  had  not  dreamed  of  them  he  would  not 
admit  them. 

"  But  you  can't !  "  he  protested.  "  It  is  impossible 
that  you  should.  It's  inconceivable  that  a  woman 
of  your  delicacy  should  go  into  such  coarse  work !  " 

"  Is  it  better  that  it  should  be  left  to  coarse 
women  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  there  has  been  enough 
of  coarseness  in  it  already." 

"  But  this — why,  it's  something  that  one  can't  even 
speak  about !  " 

'  Yes,  something  that  we  are  not  permitted  even 
to  mention,  Wesley;  and  because  we  aren't  permitted 
even  to  mention  it,  the  thing  grows  and  grows,  night 
by  night.  It  thrives  in  the  shadow  of  our  silence. 
They  tell  me  that  the  liquor  laws  are  broken,  because 
nobody  will  mention  it;  that  bestial  men  get  rich  in 


2o6         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

it,  because  nobody  will  mention  it;  that  in  this  city 
alone  there  are  three  hundred  saloon  dance-halls  in 
tended  to  furnish  its  supply,  because  nobody  will 
mention  it !  " 

Figuratively,  Dyker  threw  up  his  hands  in  horror, 
but  actually,  like  all  desperate  men,  he  seized  at  the 
straws  of  detail. 

"  Now,  that  just  shows  how  wrong  your  view  of 
the  whole  subject  happens  to  be,"  he  declared.  "  My 
work  has  put  me  in  a  position  to  know  something 
about  these  dance-halls,  and  I  know  that  they  exist 
simply  because  the  girls  that  go  to  them  want  them 
to  exist — the  girls,  mark  you;  not  the  men.  Why, 
the  girls  aren't  taken  to  such  places;  they  go  of 
themselves,  they  pay  their  own  admission,  and  it  is 
the  usual  thing  for  a  girl  earning  six  dollars  a  week 
in  a  store  to  save  fifty  cents  out  of  every  salary- 
envelope  for  the  dance-halls." 

"  Then  you  want  me  to  conclude  that  the  fact 
that  they  want  to  do  the  thing  makes  the  thing 
right?" 

"  You  don't  understand " 

"  Precisely;  and  so  I  mean  to  learn." 

"  You  can't  learn.  No  matter  how  closely  you 
study  this  whole  matter,  you  can't  learn,  Marian. 
How  can  a  clean-hearted,  clean-lived  American  girl 
ever  get  the  point  of  view  of  these  low-down,  low 
browed  foreigners?  It's  the  sort  of  thing  they're 
used  to." 

"  Before  they  begin  it?" 

"  It's  the  survival  of  the  fittest." 

"  Then  can't  some  be  made  more  fit  to  survive?  " 

"  It's  the  law  of  life,  and  it  can't  be  stopped." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         207 

"  So  was  negro  slavery  the  law  of  life.  It  couldn't 
be  stopped  either — until  we  stopped  it." 

"That  is  all  theory,  Marian;  it  won't  work  out 
in  practice.  The  great  point  is  that  these  unfortu 
nate  women,  whether  they  become  unfortunate 
through  the  dance-halls  or  anywhere  else,  are  simply 
not  our  sort  of  clay:  they're  not  Americans." 

u  They  are  human  beings." 

"  A  pretty  low  example." 

"  And  they  are  more  Americans  than  your  ances 
tors  or  mine  were  three  hundred  years  ago." 

"  Nonsense.  They're  different,  I  tell  you — differ 
ent.  Seriously,  I  know  what  I  am  talking  about: 
I  speak  from  systematic  investigations,  reports,  sta 
tistics.  The  very  latest  investigation  shows  that  all 
but  about  thirteen  per  cent,  of  these  women  were 
either  born  abroad  or  else  are  the  children  of  for 
eign  parents.  It  is  always  the  newest  immigrants 
that  swell  the  ranks,  and  of  course  the  newest  immi 
grants  are  our  lowest  type." 

"  I  don't  see  that  all  this  alters  the  question." 

"  Well,  it  does." 

"  The  lower  they  are,  the  more  plainly  it  is  our 
duty  to  raise  them." 

"  My  dear  Marian,  how  can  you  raise  them  when 
you  don't  understand  them?" 

Marian  shook  her  handsome  head. 

"You  will  come  back  to  that,"  she  said;  "and 
all  that  I  can  answer  is  that,  not  being  utterly  stupid, 
and  having  come  to  understand  a  few  abstract  prob 
lems,  I  have  hopes  of  mastering  something  so  close 
at  hand  to  me  and  so  concrete  as  a  fellow  human 
being." 


208         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"What,  for  instance?"  asked  Wesley,  "can  you 
understand  of  the  typical  Jewish  girl  of  the  East 
Side?" 

"  A  good  deal,  I  think.  They  were  talking  about 
that  type  at  the  settlement  this  evening.  We  were 
looking  from  the  front  windows  at  an  endless  stream 
of  Jewish  girls  tramping  home  from  the  factories 
where  they  worked  to  the  tenements  where  they  slept. 
Somebody  said  there  are  nearly  four  hundred  thou 
sand  Jews  living  east  of  the  Bowery;  that  in  most 
Jewish  families  the  ambition  to  which  every  comfort 
must  be  sacrificed  is  the  education  of  the  boys;  that 
for  this  reason  the  girls  must  work  and  are  worked 
until  there  is  nowhere  else  in  the  world  where  so 
much  labor  is  got  out  of  young  women,  and  yet  that 
the  Jewess  that  is  not  married  and  a  mother  before 
she  is  twenty  is  regarded  as  a  family  disgrace. 
It  seems  to  me,  Wesley,  that  the  case  of  those 
girls  is  pretty  easy  to  understand.  It  seems  to 
me  that  they  are  on  the  horns  of  a  rather  ugly 
dilemma." 

Dyker's  cane  whipped  the  air  as  if  it  were  striking 
at  the  heads  of  opposing  arguments. 

"  You  accept  as  gospel,"  he  said,  "  everything  that 
is  told  you  by  anybody  but  me.  It  isn't  a  pleasant 
subject,  but,  if  you  insist  upon  facts,  let  me  tell 
you  that  there  are  troops  of  Jewesses  who  come  down 
here  from  the  upper  Ghetto  and  walk  the  streets  for 
no  other  purpose  than  to  get  money  for  their  wed 
ding  trousseaus." 

It  was  a  blow  at  her  conventions,  and  she  shud 
dered;  but  she  stood  by  her  guns.  They  had  crossed 
down  Twenty-sixth  Street  now  and  they  turned  into 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         209 

the  quiet  of  Madison  Avenue,  among  comfortable 
houses  and  silent  churches,  as  she  answered. 

"  If  they  do  that,"  she  said,  "  it  is  because  they 
have  to." 

"  Have  to?    Why  on  earth  should  they  have  to?  " 

"  I  don't  know,  but  I  know  that  the  very  use 
they  make  of  the  money  shows  what  they  do  is  only 
a  means  and  not  an  end." 

"  Are  trousseaus  so  necessary  that  these  girls  have 
to  sell  their  souls  for  them?  " 

"  Souls  have  been  sold  for  less.  Even  you  and 
I  make  considerable  sacrifices  for  things  that  other 
people  in  other  classes  would  not  think  needful  at 
all." 

He  had  done  his  best  to  bridle  his  annoyance,  but 
now  he  could  bridle  it  no  longer.  He  was  wholly 
sincere  in  his  inability  to  take  seriously  either  the 
girl  or  her  point  of  view,  and  now,  though  he  felt 
as  if  he  were  riding  a  hunter  at  a  butterfly,  he 
charged  blindly. 

"  Oh,  please  don't  let  us  jump  at  sentiment  and 
theory,"  he  remonstrated;  "let  us  keep  our  feet  on 
figures  and  fact.  The  figures  grow  with  the  popula 
tion:  they  always  have  so  grown  and  they  always 
will  so  grow.  And  the  plain  fact  is  that,  though  a 
few  good  people  have  been  trying  to  stop  this  thing 
for  four  thousand  years,  they  have  never  succeeded 
in  doing  anything  but  soiling  themselves  in  the  at 
tempt." 

"  I  know  that,"  she  frankly  acknowledged,  "  and 
I  don't  know  what  it  is  that's  to  blame;  but  I  know 
that  there  isn't  any  evil  that  hasn't  some  cure  if  we 
can  only  find  it  out." 


210         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Then  why  not  leave  the  search  for  a  cure  to  the 
experienced?  " 

"  I  shall;  but  I  propose  to  become  one  of  the  ex 
perienced.  I  mean  to  give  my  time,  at  least  for  a 
while,  to  first-hand  study.  Perhaps  then  I  shall  learn 
enough  to  know  that  it's  useless  for  me  to  go  on, 
but  I  shall  keep  trying  to  go  on  until  I  am  convinced 
that  there  isn't  any  use  in  the  trying." 

"  That's  absurd,  Marian — simply  absurd.  The 
condition  is,  after  all,  one  that  must  be  dealt  with 
by  the  law,  and  I  tell  you  honestly  that,  as  yet,  even 
the  law  is  helpless." 

"  Has  the  law  really  tried?  Has  it  ever  at 
tempted,  for  instance,  to  do  anything  to  the  men 
that  take  these  immigrant  girls  at  the  dock  and  make 
slaves  of  them?  " 

"Yes,  it  has;  it  has  tried  just  that.  In  Chicago 
two  men  were  arrested  for  taking  a  couple  of  such 
girls — they  had  brought  them  from  New  York — 
and  when  the  case  was  appealed,  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court  found  that,  though  importation  of 
girls  was  a  violation  of  federal  law,  yet  the  federal 
law  providing  a  punishment  for  merely  harboring 
such  girls  after  their  arrival  was  unconstitutional." 

Marian's  voice  faltered. 

"Is — is  that  true?"  she  asked. 

"  Absolutely,"  said  Dyker.  Like  most  lawyers  of 
his  generation,  his  ideas  of  what  was  right  were 
limited  only  by  the  final  decisions  of  what  was  legal, 
and  if  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  had, 
by  even  a  majority  of  one,  declared  that  the  sun 
moved  around  the  earth,  Dyker  would  have  first 
denied  and  then  forgotten  all  previous  astronomy. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         211 

"  Absolutely,"  he  repeated,  and  awaited  her  capitula 
tion. 

But  Marian  did  not  capitulate.  She  merely  drew 
a  long  breath  and  answered: 

"  After  all,  that,  of  course,  is  just  a  small  portion 
of  the  big  question,  and  the  only  way  it  moves  me  is 
to  lessen  my  opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court." 

It  was  Wesley's  turn  to  gasp,  and  he  did  so.  He 
had  always  suspected  that  these  college-settlements 
were  hotbeds  of  Socialism  and  Anarchy — two 
theories  that,  to  Dyker,  were  one  and  the  same — 
and  now  he  had  his  confirmation. 

He  was  too  cynically  wrong  upon  one  side  of  their 
subject  to  realize  how  emotionally  wrong  she,  in 
her  hope  of  accomplishment  through  personal  appeal, 
might  be  upon  the  other.  But  here  was  a  concrete 
denial  of  his  one  sincere  conviction,  and,  though  he 
was  at  last  calm  enough  to  see  that  he  must  not 
allow  this  conviction  to  wreck  his  suit,  he  was  not 
so  calm  as  to  maintain  a  clear  judgment.  It  was 
plain  that  Marian  would  not  be  turned  from  her 
experiment.  His  best  course  was,  he  then  reasoned, 
immediately  to  put  on  record  his  opinion  of  its 
futility,  even  to  quarrel  with  her  in  defense  of  that 
opinion,  and  then,  when  experience  brought  the 
awakening  upon  which  his  own  worldly  experience 
counted,  to  stand  ready  to  profit  by  the  inevitable 
reaction  that  would  most  likely  show  the  perfidy  of 
the  women  whom  Marian  hoped  to  help,  detract 
from  the  credibility  of  any  gossip  they  might  re 
count  concerning  him,  and  end  by  winning  him  his 
wife. 

"  All  right,"  he  said  sharply,  "  it  is  perfectly  use- 


212         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

less  to  talk  reasonably  to  anybody  that  can  take  such 
a  view  of  so  simple  a  matter.  Here  is  Thirty-fourth 
Street.  I  think  we  had  better  walk  over  to  Broad 
way  and  get  that  taxi." 

The  worst  thing  that  a  man  can  impute  to  a  hand 
some  woman  is  a  lack  of  intellect.  Marian's  cheeks 
flushed. 

"  I  quite  agree  with  you,"  she  replied.  "  I  am 
utterly  incapable  of  arguing  with  anybody  that  so 
confuses  law  and  justice." 

"Very  well,"  said  Dyker;  "but  I  want  you  to 
remember  what  I  have  said  upon  the  subject  as  a 
whole.  When  you  have  trusted  these  women  and 
been  betrayed  by  them,  when  they  have  poisoned 
your  mind  against  all  the  principles  you  have  been 
brought  up  to  believe,  when  you  have  left  the  world 
of  sentiment  and  bruised  your  poor  hands  with  ham 
mering  at  the  door  of  fact,  then  you  will  acknowledge 
that  I  have  been  right.  I  am  not  angry 

"  Oh,  of  course  not!  " 

"  I  am  not  angry,  but  I  am  firm.  I  only  ask  you 
to  believe  that  I  shall  never  be  far  away  from  the 
settlement,  and  that  you  have  only  to  telephone  for 
me  when  you  have  need  of  me." 

Marian  compressed  her  lips  to  a  more  severe  firm 
ness,  and  the  ride  from  Thirty-fourth  Street  to  River 
side  Drive  was  made  in  silence;  but  the  following 
Monday  found  her,  against  all  parental  protests,  en^ 
listed  as  a  settlement-worker  in  Rivington  Street. 


XV 

IMPARTIAL  JUSTICE 

MICHAEL  M.  O'MALLEY,  political  boss, 
held  his  court,  that  next  morning,  in  the 
back  room  of  Ludwig  Schleger's  saloon  on 
Second  Avenue,  and,  because  it  was  to  be  a  busy 
day  and  there  were  many  pleas  to  be  made  and  many 
petitions  to  be  received,  he  came  early  to  his  post. 
As  he  swung  majestically  up  the  street  toward  his 
destination,  his  carefully  pressed  light  gray  suit  flap 
ping  in  the  warm  breeze  about  a  figure  so  tall  and 
so  thin  that  any  suit  approaching  "  a  fit "  would 
have  achieved  only  a  caricature,  his  progress  was 
almost  regal.  Pedestrians  stepped  to  one  side  as  if 
the  bulk  of  his  unseen  dignity  demanded  a  far  wider 
strip  of  the  paved  channel  than  was  required  by  his 
visible  physique.  Workingmen  touched  their  grimy 
caps,  the  overseers  of  the  street-repairing  gangs 
bowed  respectfully,  children  on  their  way  to  school 
bobbed  their  heads,  and,  at  a  corner,  Officer  Riley, 
concluding  a  substitute  week  "  on  the  day  turn," 
offered  his  best  military  salute.  The  keeper  of  every 
news-stand  received  a  nod;  the  bootblacks  outside  of 
each  saloon  were  given  a  brief  word  of  greeting; 
there  was  not  a  beggar  but  got  some  largess,  and 
of  the  several  men  that  hurried  up  with  a  request, 
hinted  or  expressed,  all  were  permitted  to  walk  a 
few  steps  in  the  august  presence,  all  received  a  brief, 


214         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

civil  phrase  of  agreement,  postponement,  or  con 
sideration. 

"Trouble  about  your  place?"  It  was  thus  that 
O'Malley  interrupted  the  voluble  plea  of  a  saloon 
keeper  that  approached  him.  "  I'll  have  that  cop, 
Conners,  looked  into.  His  eyes  are  too  new;  they 
see  more'n  they're  paid  to  see.  Who's  tendin'  day- 
bar  for  you?  Johnny  Mager?  All  right,  if  they 
take  the  thing  up  front,  I'll  see  that  you  get  your 
license  transferred  in  his  name.  Keep  your  shirt  on 
an'  leave  it  to  me." 

He  had  not  paused  in  his  walk;  he  had  not  raised 
his  quiet  voice  or  quickened  his  slow  speech;  but 
the  suppliant  retired  satisfied,  reassured. 

Indeed,  O'Malley's  face  was  one  that,  if  it  would 
not  inspire  confidence  in  a  stranger  unacquainted  with 
the  man's  reputation  for  guarding  the  interests  of 
his  dependents,  at  least  bore  the  unmistakable  stamp 
of  that  knowledge  of  life  which  is  power.  It  was 
sallow  and  long,  with  a  long  thin  nose  and  long  thin 
lips,  and  cold  eyes  that  thrust  as  swiftly  and  as  deeply 
as  the  stilettos  of  Mr.  O'Malley's  Italian  constitu 
ents.  He  smiled  often  and  his  smile  was  bitter; 
he  spoke  little  and  his  words  were  short;  but  his 
servants  had  early  learned  that  he  was  as  sure  to 
keep  his  promise  as  he  was  ready  to  give  it,  and 
that,  so  long  as  his  tasks  were  well  done,  he  was  an 
indulgent  master. 

He  entered  "  Schleger's  place  "  with  the  air  of 
an  owner,  nodded  to  the  white-jacketed  man  behind 
the  polished  counter  and  before  the  polished  mirror, 
and  gave  a  quick,  firm  pressure  to  the  plump,  out 
stretched  hand  of  the  fat  and  grinning  proprietor. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         215 

"All  well  with  the  family?"  he  asked,  smiling 
his  wry  smile. 

Ludwig  Schleger  beamed  assent. 

"Anything  doing  last  night?" 

"NothinV  replied  Ludwig.  " 'Ceptin'  Mr. 
Dyker  called  you  on  the  telephone.  Wouldn't  say 
what  he  wanted." 

"  I  know  that.  Haven't  had  any  more  rough- 
housing?  " 

"  No,"  grinned  Schleger,  wisely;  "  the  boys  are  all 
got  wise  that  they  can't  meddle  with  my  new  night 
man." 

"I  see.    Name's  Hermann  Hoffmann,  ain't  it?" 

"  That's  right." 

"  Hum.  Well,  he  may  be  useful.  You  must  get 
him  to  move  into  this  precinct,  or  else  register  him 
from  here.  Votes  right,  of  course?" 

"  I  ain't  asked  him  yet." 

"  Do  it  to-night." 

O'Malley  walked  to  the  dimly  lighted  back-room, 
hung  with  racing  prints  and  framed  lithographs  ad 
vertising  a  wide  variety  of  whiskeys.  He  drew  a 
wicker-bottomed  chair  to  a  stained  round  table,  and 
sat  down. 

The  proprietor  brought  him  a  glass  and  a  syphon 
of  seltzer — the  boss's  only  drink — and  disappeared. 
The  bar-keeper  came  with  a  handful  of  black  cigars 
for  which  O'Malley  paid  with  a  bill,  refusing  the 
change,  and  also  disappeared.  Then  the  door  of 
communication  was  shut  and  guarded,  admission  be 
ing  denied  to  all  persons  not  properly  accredited,  and 
the  quiet,  thin  man  in  the  light  gray  suit,  now  sip 
ping  his  seltzer,  now  reflectively  adjusting  his  bright 


216         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

blue  tie,  which  bore  a  brilliant  diamond  pin,  and 
always  slowly  smoking,  began  his  conference  with 
such  callers  as  he  had  granted  appointments. 

They  came  in  force — alone  and  in  groups — all 
manner  of  men  by  the  main  entrance  and  a  woman 
or  two  ushered  through  a  side  door.  This  one  was 
promised  a  reward  for  duty  to  be  done,  that  one 
assigned  to  the  performance  of  a  delicate  piece  of 
diplomacy.  Now  and  then  a  short,  sharp,  cold 
reprimand  for  negligence  or  failure  sent  away  a  caller 
whipped,  penitent,  trembling;  and  here  and  there 
release  was  promised  for  a  wayward  son  sent  to 
"  The  Island,"  or  a  line  of  credit  written  for  use 
at  a  grocer's  shop. 

Wesley  Dyker  came  early.  He  paused  at  the  bar 
for  a  drink  to  stiffen  his  courage,  lingered  a  little 
longer  until  a  predecessor  had  been  dismissed,  and 
then,  his  lids  lowered,  entered,  alone,  with  a  succinct 
account  of  Rose's  attempt  to  play  a  double  game. 

When  he  had  finished  the  narrative,  O'Malley  sat 
for  a  while  gazing  unconcernedly  at  the  blackened 
ceiling,  and  smoking  quietly. 

"Well?"  he  said  at  last,  and  turned  the  sharp 
thrust  of  his  gaze  upon  his  caller. 

Dyker,  who  was  sitting  opposite  and  who  had 
been  served  with  a  drink  of  whiskey,  tossed  off  the 
liquor  in  order  to  gain  time  to  muster  an  answer  for 
this  unexpected  query. 

"  Well,"  he  at  length  replied,  annoyed  at  thus 
being  put  into  a  position  where  he  must  make  his 
proposition  in  the  form  of  a  request,  "  are  you  going 
to  stand  for  that  sort  of  thing?  " 

"  I  dunno." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         217 

"  /  wouldn't  stand  for  it,"  said  Dyker. 

"  If  you  had  my  job  you  might  have  to." 

There  was  another  pause.  The  long  fingers  of 
O'Malley  tapped  gently  on  the  table.  Dyker  shifted 
uneasily  in  his  seat. 

"  I  wouldn't  stand  for  it  a  minute !  "  he  at  last 
broke  forth.  "  And  what's  more,  you  can  have  her 
up  for  something  worse  than  the  disorderly-house 
charge.  She  has  one  kidnapped  girl  in  her  house 
now,  and  I've  got  another  that  escaped  from  her, 
and  who's  ready  to  testify." 

An  instant  later  he  was  sorry  that  he  had  spoken 
so  readily. 

O'Malley  tilted  back  against  the  wall  until  the 
front  legs  of  his  chair  rose  six  inches  from  the  floor. 
He  blew  an  easy  ring  of  smoke. 

"  You  seem  to  have  come  here  with  your  case  all 
prepared,"  he  remarked. 

Wesley  flushed  and  stammered. 

"  You  see,"  he  began,  "  I  mean  that  I  got  hot 
at  this,  and  I  said  to  myself  that  it  was  only  right 
to  let  you  know  this  woman  wasn't  to  be  depended 
upon." 

The  forward  legs  of  O'Malley's  chair  came  down 
with  a  loud  thump.  Wesley  started,  but  the  boss 
only  impaled  him  with  another  cold  glance. 

"  See  here,"  said  he,  "  before  we  can  do  business 
we'd  better  altogether  understand  each  other.  Just 
what  is  it  you  want?  " 

"  I— I  think  I've  made  that  clear." 

"  /  think  not." 

"  I  want  this  Legere  woman  pinched  for  running 
a  white-slave  place.  I  want  to  see  her  taught  a 


2i8         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

lesson  that  the  other  women  down  her  way  will  profit 
by." 

"  Of  course  you  do.  But  what  do  you  want  for 
yourself?  " 

The  issue  was  too  conclusively  joined  to  permit  of 
further  evasion.  Wesley  took  his  courage  in  his 
hands. 

"  Why,  I've  not  made  any  secret  of  that,"  he  said, 
"  and  neither  has  headquarters.  I  want  the  next 
election  for  magistrate.  I  told  you  that  long 
ago." 

He  launched  his  declaration  with  the  bravado  of 
weakness  at  bay,  and  then  breathlessly  awaited  the 
answer. 

Michael  O'Malley  leaned  back  again  in  his  chair, 
clasped  his  hands  behind  his  head,  and  closed  his 
keen  eyes,  .reflecting. 

His  was  an  hereditary  office,  but,  unlike  most  men 
that  inherit  power,  he  had  inherited  also  the  abilities 
that  had  gained  the  power.  His  father,  who  had 
begun  life  as  a  policeman,  had  been  a  great  exemplar 
of  the  political  uses  of  an  element  fully  realized  only 
by  the  expert  politician:  the  human  element.  The 
name  of  O'Malley  had  now  for  a  generation  been, 
south  of  Fourteenth  Street,  a  magic  title.  To  a 
legion  of  men,  women,  and  children,  it  stood  for 
a  sort  of  substitute,  and  very  near  and  practical, 
Providence.  It  implied  contact,  fellow-feeling,  the 
personal  relation.  Acting  upon  the  politician's  axiom 
that  whatever  is  acquired  is  right,  the  elder  O'Malley 
had  risen  from  the  street  force  until,  after  zealous 
party-work,  he  had  been  promoted,  in  the  palmy 
days  of  policy  and  the  pool- rooms,  to  the  "  Gambling 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         219 

Squad,"  where  he  had  performed  the  astounding 
financial  feat  of  saving  eight  times  his  monthly  sal 
ary,  had  retired,  and  grown  annually  richer  and 
stronger  through  politics,  without  once  losing  the 
esteem  of  his  voting  underlings,  or  once  seeming  to 
cease  being  one  of  them.  Since  his  father's  death, 
now  that  gambling  had  declined  and  prostitution  had 
risen  as  political  material,  Michael,  who  had  been 
brought  up  to  the  business,  had  filled  the  place  of 
that  genuinely  mourned  parent.  Without  any  pub 
licly  acknowledged  means  of  support,  even  with  no 
headquarters  save  the  daily  shifted  back-rooms  of 
saloons,  he  had  extended  and  increased  the  power 
and  the  fortune  that  had  been  left  to  him.  He  was 
known  as  the  friend  of  the  distressed;  he  was  recog 
nized  as  benefiting  with  his  left  hand  the  poor  whom 
he  unimpededly  robbed  with  his  right.  To  those 
who  were  without  money  or  without  assistance  he 
was  always  accessible.  He  made  festival  with  the 
merry  and  was  readily  sympathetic  with  them  that 
mourned.  By  small  gifts  at  all  times  and  large  gifts 
in  days  of  emergency,  by  acting  as  the  adviser,  the 
employment-agent,  the  defender,  from  the  law,  of 
the  people  whom  he  exploited  and  upon  whose  weak 
nesses  and  vices  he  throve,  he  won  and  held  fast 
both  the  tribute  and  the  allegiance  of  the  vicious  and 
the  weak. 

It  was  a  mighty  position  and  yet  one  that,  in  mo 
ments  like  the  present,  was  inherently  delicate,  one 
in  which  the  fortunate  man  must  move  warily  lest 
in  gaining  a  new  friend  he  lose  an  old.  It  is  all 
very  well  to  be  temperate  and  profit  by  drunkenness, 
to  be  abstemious  and  take  money  from  prostitution; 


220         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

it  is  easy  to  give  presents  at  Christmas  and  picnics 
in  summer  when  the  giving  is  in  reality  only  paying 
a  small  rebate  to  wives  for  drunken  husbands,  to 
mothers  for  daughters  stolen.  It  is  easy  to  find  a 
place  in  the  municipal  government  for  the  man  that 
stuffs  a  ballot-box  for  you,  or  the  procurer  that  regis 
ters  your  fraudulent  votes  from  the  houses  of  his 
customers;  but  it  is  fatal  to  punish,  for  what  may 
be  a  passing  disloyalty,  anyone  that  your  world,  per 
haps  ignorant  that  offense  has  been  committed,  re 
gards  as  having  been  placed  by  a  careless  Heaven 
under  your  protecting  wing, — fatal,  that  is  to  say, 
unless  you  acquire  something  more  than  you  throw 
away. 

Of  all  this,  though  scarcely  with  such  frankness 
of  phrase,  Michael  O'Malley  made  thought  before 
he  gave  Dyker  the  reply  for  which  that  clever  young 
lawyer  was  waiting.  Behind  his  closed  eyes  he 
weighed  the  chances  carefully:  the  things  to  be 
gained  against  the  things  that  might  be  lost. 

Then  he  thoughtfully  lit  another  black  cigar. 

"  You've  got  to  keep  out  of  personal  relations  with 
these  women,"  he  yawned. 

Dyker  bit  his  lip. 

"  I  don't  have  them,"  he  replied. 

"Yes,  you  do.     Cut  'em  out.     Un'erstand?  " 

Surprisedly,  angrily,  Dyker  found  himself  bowing 
obedience,  like  a  school-urchin  detected  in  some 
breach  of  academic  discipline. 

"  A  woman  with  a  past,"  continued  O'Malley, 
"  is  all  right  for  the  present,  but  a  slow  mare  in  the 
futurity." 

"  I  dare  say  you're  correct,"  said  Wesley  Dyker. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         221 

With  a  single  blow  of  the  whip,  the  master  had 
demonstrated  his  mastery. 

O'Malley  smoked  a  while  longer  in  silence. 

"  Now  then,"  he  at  last  pursued,  "  about  this 
magistracy.  You  think  the  boys'll  stand  for  you  ?  " 

"  I  think  they  will,"  Wesley  replied,  with  humble 
mien,  but  rising  assurance.  "  And  I  think  it  ought 
to  make  the  ticket  look  better  to  the  uptown  people 
to  have — if  you  will  pardon  my  saying  so — my  sort 
of  name  on  it." 

O'Malley  grunted. 

"  Don't  you  worry  about  the  looks  of  the  ticket, 
or  the  value  of  your  sort  of  a  name,"  he  said.  "  The 
kid-glove  game  is  played  out;  it's  only  the  monkey 
who's  always  hopping  about  on  his  family-tree." 

Dyker's  courage  ebbed  again,  but  he  knew  that 
to  stand  upon  his  dignity  was  to  be  overthrown. 

"  At  all  events,"  he  persisted,  "  I  am  pretty  well 
known  hereabouts  by  this  time,  and  I  think  honestly 
that  I  am  pretty  well  liked." 

O'Malley  nodded.  He  knew  more  about  that 
than  Dyker  knew.  Dyker  had,  with  more  or  less 
direct  assistance  from  O'Malley's  own  headquarters, 
already  won  some  prominence  for  himself,  and  had 
been  of  some  use  to  the  organization,  in  that  sort 
of  legal-practice  which  is  a  highly  specialized  branch 
of  the  profession  on  the  lower  East  Side.  The  pur 
pose  of  that  branch  is  simply  the  protection  of  the 
criminal,  especially  the  criminal  engaged  in  the  pro 
curing  or  confining  of  slave-girls,  but  its  methods, 
far  from  being  unusual,  are  merely  a  daring  exten 
sion  of  the  methods  that,  within  the  last  decade,  have 
increased  in  popularity  among  the  seemingly  more 


222         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

respectable  practitioners.  Evidence  is  manufactured 
or  destroyed,  according  to  immediate  needs;  favor 
able  witnesses  are  taught  favorable  testimony;  post 
ponements  are  secured  until  a  politically  indebted 
judge  is  on  the  bench.  There  follows  a  formal  bel 
lowing  against  what  are  called  invasions  of  inalien 
able  personal  rights,  and  then  there  comes  a  matter- 
of-course  acquittal.  With  Dyker's  ability  in  this 
sort  of  work  O'Malley  was  thoroughly  familiar;  for 
this  man's  party-services  he  was  sufficiently  grateful, 
and  with  the  chance  of  the  lawyer's  rise  to  a  popu 
larity  that  would  be  of  still  further  help  he  was  well 
satisfied. 

"  If  you'd  be  elected,"  he  at  length  reflectively 
remarked,  "  you'd  have  a  mighty  responsible  posi 
tion,  Dyker." 

"  I  know  that." 

"  There  would  be  a  good  many  ways  " — O'Malley 
knocked,  with  great  deliberation,  the  ash  from  his 
cigar — "  a  good  many  ways  in  which  you  could  help 
the  party — if  you'd  be  elected." 

He  seemed  to  be  discussing,  disinterestedly,  a 
purely  abstract  question;  but  Dyker  did  not  miss  his 
meaning. 

"  I  shouldn't  overlook  them,"  he  said. 

"  And,  if  you'd  be  elected,  there'd  be  a  lot  of  ways 
in  which  you  might  hurt — the  party." 

"  I  scarcely  think  you  have  any  just  cause  for 
apprehension  upon  that  score,  Mr.  O'Malley.  I 
think  that  my  record  speaks  for  itself.  My  record 
is  regular;  it  is  an  open  book  to  the  whole  city " 

"  Never  mind  that,  Dyker;  it's  an  open  book  to 
me,  anyhow." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         223 

"I'm  aware  of  it;  but  then " 

"  All  I  want  to  know  is  two  things." 

"And  they  are,  Mr.  O'Malley?  " 

"  First,  are  you  the  kind  that  lose  their  head  over 
a  good  thing  and  land  in  jail?  " 

"  Does  my  law-practice  seem  to  indicate  that  I 
should  be  likely  to  overstep  legal  limits?  " 

"  No,  I  guess  it  don't.  But  you  can't  always  tell; 
we  can't  afford  no  hogs;  and  that  sort  of  a  man 
gives  all  his  friends  a  black  eye." 

"  But  I  say  to  you— 

"  And  next,  I  want  to  know,  Mr.  Dyker,  whether 
you're  the  kind  of  a  man  that  don't  forget  them  that 
put  him  where  he's  at." 

The  low,  slow  spoken  sentence  ended  with  a  sud 
den  click  of  Mr.  O'Malley's  long,  vulpine  jaws.  He 
leaned  quickly  forward  across  the  table  and  fixed 
Wesley  with  the  stiletto  of  his  eyes. 

Dyker  met  that  gaze  steadily.  He  leaned,  in  his 
turn,  toward  O'Malley,  and  his  own  voice  dropped 
to  a  whisper.  There  was  an  exchange  of  a  dozen 
sentences,  and  the  two  men  had  arrived  at  a  perfect 
understanding:  Dyker  was  as  good  as  elected. 

O'Malley  pressed  the  call-button. 

"  Billy,"  he  said  to  the  bar-keeper,  "  have  some 
body  run  out  and  bring  in  Larry  Riley  off  his  beat. 
I  want  to  see  him." 

As  the  bar-keeper  nodded  and  disappeared,  Dyker 
started  to  rise. 

"  I  don't  know  whether  Riley  had  better  see  me 
here,"  he  said.  "  Rose's  house  is  on  his  regular 
beat." 

"  All  the  more  reason  to  sit  tight,"  replied  the 


224        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

comprehending  O'Malley.  "  What's  the  use  of  get- 
tin'  square  with  a  person  unless  the  person  knows 
who  done  it?  " 

"  But  I  am  not  sure  that  Riley  would  be  a  safe 
man  to  confide  this  to.  He's  naturally  a  friend  of 
Rose's." 

"  He's  more  of  a  friend  of  mine." 

The  officer  entered  a  minute  later,  his  flushed  face 
gravely  attentive,  his  helmet  in  his  hand. 

"  Riley,"  said  O'Malley,  "  you  know  this  Legere 
woman." 

"  I  do  that,  Mr.  O'Malley,  sir." 

"  Well,  she's  been  gettin'  too  gay.  When  you 
go  off  duty,  you  tell  Jim  to  have  her  place  pinched 
to-night." 

Riley's  cheeks  became  a  shade  less  red. 

"  It's  sorry  I  am  to  hear,  sir,  that  she's  been 
misbehavin'  of  herself,"  he  murmured. 

"  Sure  you're  sorry.  Tell  Jim  to  get  there  early: 
we  don't  want  nobody  but  the  women." 

"  What  "—Riley  wet  his  dry  lips—"  What's  the 
charge?  " 

"  Runnin'  a  white-slave  joint.  You're  to  be  sure 
to  get  a  girl  she  has  in  the  third  floor  back." 

O'Malley's  tone  had  been  conclusive;  it  indicated 
that  the  interview  was  at  an  end;  but  the  big  officer 
stood  twirling  his  helmet  between  his  large  hands. 

"  Mr.  O'Malley,  sir?  "  he  began. 

"What  is  it,  Riley?" 

"There's  nothin'  else?" 

"  Nuthin'." 

"  An' — there  ain't  no  other  way  out  of  it  for  Mrs. 
Legere?" 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         225 

"  No,  there  ain't.  But  you  can  report  her  house 
and  get  the  credit  yourself,  Riley." 

"Thank  ye  kindly,  sir;  but  if  ye  don't  mind,  sir, 
I  think  I'd  rather  let  someone  get  it  as  nades  it  more. 
Ye  see,  Mr.  O'Malley,  sir,  this  here  Mrs.  Legere 
has  been  powerful  kind  to  me,  an' " 

"  All  right,  have  it  your  own  way." 

"  I— I  can't  do  nothin'  for  her,  Mr.  O'Malley?  " 

"Not  this  time.  That's  all,  Riley.— And, 
Riley " 

The  thin  boss  stood  up  and  crossed  to  the  bulky 
policeman.  His  voice  was  still  low  and  soft. 

"Yis,  Mr.  O'Malley?" 

"  If  that  woman  gets  wind  of  this  an'  makes 
a  getaway,  I'll  have  your  uniform  off  you  so 
God  damned  quick  you'll  wish  I'd  skinned  you 
alive." 

"  Yis,  Mr.  O'Malley,  sir,"  said  the  officer.  "  No 
fear  of  that,  sir." 

But  he  left  the  audience-chamber  with  a  heavy 
heart.  He  lived  the  life  that  he  was  compelled  to 
live,  and  he  did  what  he  was  ordered  to  do,  but  he 
could  not  without  compunction  turn  upon  one  that 
had  bought  a  right  to  his  own  and  his  superior's 
protection. 

There  was  not  a  little  silent  bitterness  in  his  heart 
as,  later,  returning  to  the  station-house,  he  thought 
upon  these  things.  He  remembered  the  days  when 
he  had  been  new  upon  the  force.  Those  were  the 
days  when  the  popular  tide  had  turned  against 
gambling  and,  amid  the  raids  that  meant  the  break 
ing  of  steel  doors,  the  pursuit  of  offenders  through 
secret  passages  and  across  steep  roofs,  it  was  for  a 


226        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

while  possible  for  a  policeman  to  retain  his  ideals. 
But  he  remembered  also  how,  when  the  ruling  powers 
had  thus  been  forced  to  destroy  the  nests  where  once 
they  had  gathered  golden  eggs,  the  long  arm  of 
necessity  swung  slowly  backward  until  it  paused  at 
the  point  where  it  had  since  remained  and,  because 
the  eggs  must  be  gathered  somewhere,  the  police 
were  expected  to  gather  them  from  the  aeries  of  the 
vultures  that  preyed  upon  women. 

Riley  had  not  minded,  every  pay-day,  handing 
over  to  the  appointed  heeler  the  five  dollars  where- 
for  he  received  a  receipt  for  a  dollar  and  a  half 
as  dues  to  the  political  club  to  which  he  was  ex 
pected  to  belong.  For  quite  some  time  he  had  been 
content  with  closing  his  eyes  to  saloons  that  were 
opened  on  Sundays  by  proprietors  that  were  power 
ful,  and  with  allowing  others  to  profit  by  the  re 
wards  of  his  voluntary  blindness.  But  at  last  there 
came  the  first  baby  in  the  Riley  home,  and  then  the 
second,  and  the  wife's  long  illness;  and  then  assess 
ments  were  increased  and,  finally,  after  many  a 
broad  hint  from  the  men  higher  up,  he  was  given 
plainly  to  understand  that  he  must  either  hand  over 
a  goodly  portion  of  money,  every  week,  from  the 
offending  women  on  his  beat,  or  else  lose  his  useful 
ness  to  the  force. 

After  that,  he  took  what  he  must  and  kept  what 
he  could.  He  had  no  trade  on  which  to  fall  back; 
his  domestic  and  political  expenses  grew  annually, 
and,  as  an  evasion  of  the  former  meant  financial 
ruin,  so  the  shirking  of  the  latter  meant  a  charge 
lodged  at  headquarters,  a  speedy  hearing,  and  an 
automatic  dismissal.  Even  when  a  non-partisan  man 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         227 

was  put  at  the  head  of  the  department,  that  official's 
practical  power  was  nullified  by  the  fact  that  the 
mayor,  a  party-man,  was  behind  him  and  could  re 
move  him  at  a  moment's  notice,  and  that  behind  the 
mayor  was  the  organization  that  had  made  and  could 
break  the  mayor.  No  individual,  so  far  as  Officer 
Riley  could  see,  was  personally  to  blame,  was  him 
self  a  free  agent;  but  the  whole  collection  of  indi 
viduals  were  the  irresponsible  parts  of  a  gigantic 
machine — from  the  inner  council  of  Tammany  to 
their  spies  in  every  municipal  department — which,  if 
ever  broken  by  the  recognized  party  of  opposition, 
must  be  so  thoroughly  rebuilt  and  so  precisely  oper 
ated  in  accordance  with  mechanical  lines  that  the 
change  would  signify  only  the  casting  out  of  the 
irresponsible  parts  and  their  replacement  by  parts 
equally  irresponsible.  Riley  could  look  no  farther, 
and,  even  could  he  have  seen  that  the  remedy  must 
be  a  remedy  of  conditions,  he  could  have  done  noth 
ing  to  free  himself. 

At  the  station-house  he  delivered  the  commands 
that  O'Malley  had  given  him.  There  his  words  pro 
duced  consternation,  but  no  thought  of  disaffection. 
The  patrol-wagon  was  ordered  to  be  in  its  stable, 
ready  to  leave  at  the  given  hour,  and  Riley,  as  the 
officer  regularly  assigned  to  night-work  on  the  beat 
in  which  stood  Rose's  house,  was  forced  to  remain 
to  accompany  it. 

"  An'  see  here,  you  men," — these  were  the  words 
with  which  the  brief  instructions  were  concluded — 
"  you  see  to  it  nobody  gets  ahead  of  you.  This  is 
O'Malley's  job,  an'  it's  got  to  be  done  right." 

In  the  underworld  of  every  city,  news,  however, 


228         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

travels  even  while  it  is  in  the  making,  and  in  no 
direction  does  it  travel  more  swiftly,  just  as  in  no 
other  does  it  travel  more  indirectly,  than,  when  the 
slave-trade  is  concerned,  it  travels  to  the  traders. 
Riley  was  careful  to  remain  in  full  view  of  the  ser 
geant's  desk  from  the  moment  the  arrangements  were 
made  until  the  time  of  execution — he  would  not  have 
dared  to  communicate  with  the  friends  that  had  thus 
swiftly  become  the  enemy — none  of  the  wagon-crew 
were  seen  to  leave  the  stable,  to  use  the  telephone, 
or  to  speak  to  a  passerby,  and  yet,  shortly  before 
the  appointed  time,  through  a  certain  club-room  over 
a  not  far  distant  saloon — a  club-room  much  affected 
by  young  men  in  Max  Grossman's  profession — there 
soon  spread  the  definite  tidings  that  Rosie  Legere 
had  just  been  "  piped  off." 

The  swarthy  and  brilliant  Rafael  Angelelli  heard 
the  word,  and  straightway,  beyond  all  doubting,  con 
firmed  it.  With  the  unheeded  easy  evening  breeze 
tumbling  his  uncovered  oily  locks,  he  ran  to  the  near 
est  booth-telephone,  and  hurriedly  called  Rose- upon 
the  wire. 

"  Eet  ees  comin' !  "  he  whispered  excitedly  into 
the  transmitter. 

Rose's  voice  replied  with  stolid  assurance. 

"What's  comin'?"  she  asked. 

"  Poliziotti — cops,"  replied  the  Italian,  finding 
more  and  more  difficulty  with  his  English  as  his 
panic  increased.  "  Eet  ees  Angel  talkin'. — I  jus' 
getta  da  nuova. — They  maka  da  pinch!" 

"  Quit  your  kiddin'." 

"  Naw.    Feramente.    Credl  tu!    Queeck! 

His.  fright  hit  the  mark. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         229 

"  How'd  it  happen?  "  demanded  Rose.  "  Who's 
back  of  it?" 

"  Dees  Meest'  Dyker." 

"  You  fool  Dago  "  —her  voice  grew  shrill  with 
fear  and  anger — "  can't  you  do  nothin'?  " 

"  Naw.     'E's  been  to  O'Malley." 

"  You're  a  hell  of  a  help !  How  about  Riley  an' 
the  rest?" 

"  Naw.     O'Malley  maka  them  do  thees." 

"  It's  that  slut  Violet,  that's  who  it  is !  That's 
gratitude  for  you.  I've  been  half  expectin'  trouble 
since  she  got  loose  last  night. — How  long  have  I?" 

"  I  don'  know.     Maybe  five  min';  maybe  one." 

"My  Gawd!" 

"  Don'  hang  up  !  Leesten :  firs'  t'eeng  you  do  getta 
da  new  girl  out.  Eef  they  getta  dees  new  girl  you 
go " 

D 

But  there  came  a  quick  click  from  the  other  end 
of  the  wire.  Rose  had  ended  the  conversation. 

Angel,  still  hatless,  hurried  through  the  few  in 
tervening  streets  and  darted  into  that  street  to  which 
he  had  just  been  speaking. 

Already  the  early  New  York  twilight  had  de 
scended,  and  the  block  seemed,  at  first  glance,  to 
have  turned  to  slumber.  One  distant,  spluttering 
arc-light  succeeded  only  in  accentuating  the  gloom. 
From  the  patch  of  darkening  sky  into  which  the 
roofs  blended,  a  bare  handful  of  pale  stars  twinkled 
weakly,  and  on  both  sides,  from  corner  to  corner, 
the  uniform,  narrow  houses  rose  in  somber  repetition, 
each  with  its  brief,  abrupt  flight  of  steps,  each  with 
its  shuttered  windows,  each  silent  behind  its  mask. 

All  this  the  Italian  saw  with  accustomed  eyes,  and 


23o         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

then  he  darted  into  the  shadow  of  an  areaway,  be 
cause  he  saw  also  that,  brief  as  had  been  his  journey, 
Riley  had  arrived  before  him. 

In  a  little  knot  of  wise  children,  a  patrol  wagon, 
its  sophisticated  horses  unconcernedly  dozing,  stood 
before  Rose's  house.  An  officer  was  in  the  doorway; 
hurried  lights  shifted  from  behind  one  bowed  shutter 
to  another,  and  gradually  Angel  became  conscious 
that,  all  along  the  street,  frightened  faces  were  peep 
ing  from  stealthily  lifted  blinds. 

For  quite  some  time  the  watcher  waited.  At  last 
the  big  figure  of  Riley  and  a  companion  appeared  in 
the  open  doorway  and  spoke  to  someone  in  the 
wagon.  Through  the  evening  quiet  their  voices  came 
distinctly. 

"Ready?"  asked  Riley. 

"  All  ready,"  came  the  answer. 

"  We've  got  the  madam  an'  the  nigger,  an'  the 
four  of  thim,  but  I  belave  they  must  have  turned  the 
new  girl  loose  before  we  got  here." 

This  time  the  reply  came  from  within  the  house, 
and  it  came  in  the  tones  of  Rose,  raised  high  in 
anger  and  in  blasphemy : 

"  You're  a  dirty  liar,  Larry  Riley !  There  never 
was  another  one,  an'  you  know  that  as  well  as  I 
do!  Just  you  wait  till  I  tell  the  judge  what  you  do 
know,  you  damned,  low,  double-crossin'  sneak!  You 
bastard,  you !  " 

Riley  and  his  companions  turned  and  ran  into  the 
vestibule. 

"  Just  you  wait,"  the  cry  continued.  "  Just  you 
wait,  you  thief,  you " 

The  voice  stopped  as  suddenly  as  it  had  started. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         231 

There  was  another  pause,  a  longer  one,  and  then 
Angel,  bending  as  far  as  he  dared  from  his  hidden 
corner,  saw  the  two  officers  come  quickly  out  with 
their  hands  upon  the  arms  of  two  cloaked  women, 
whom  they  helped  into  the  dark  recesses  of  the 
patrol-wagon.  They  went  back  and  returned  with 
one  more.  A  fourth  followed;  then  a  fifth,  and  a 
sixth.  Two  policemen  appeared,  evidently  from 
positions  that  they  had  been  guarding  in  the  rear 
of  the  house.  The  man  on  the  steps  closed  the  door 
and  locked  it.  All  the  policemen  climbed  to  the 
wagon.  The  driver  gathered  up  the  reins.  The 
tittering  children  scattered  wildly.  The  horses  woke 
up  and  started  away  at  a  brisk  trot. 

Impartial  Justice  was  beginning  her  task. 


XVI 

SANCTUARY 

TO  leave  the  protection  of  Dyker  and  the 
kindly  secrecy  of  the  cab,  and  then  to  leap 
into  a  tide  of  alien  human  beings  and  swim 
against  them  in  a  strange  and  terrifying  sea,  had 
required  the  last  grain  of  courage  and  strength  that 
was  left  in  Violet's  sapped  body  and  cowed  soul. 
It  was  only  by  the  momentum  that  Wesley's  calm 
directions  had  given  her,  and  quite  without  con 
sciousness  upon  her  own  part  that,  with  her  cloak 
gripped  tightly  about  her,  she  tottered  forward,  buf 
feted  and  shrinking,  to  the  first  corner,  wheeled  to 
the  right  into  a  street  comfortingly  darker,  turned 
again  into  a  still  narrower  and  quieter  way,  and  then 
came  to  an  uncertain  stop  before  what  seemed  to 
be  no  street  at  all,  but  only  a  small  black  rift  among 
the  beetling  walls  of  brick. 

Empty  as  was  the  way  compared  with  Rivington 
Street,  it  was  what,  had  she  not  seen  the  former  thor 
oughfare,  she  would  have  considered  oppressively 
full.  Urchins  walked  hand  in  hand  along  the  gut 
ters,  push-cart  men  cried  their  wares  over  the  cobbles 
and,  in  the  hot  night,  frowzy  women  crowded  the 
house-steps.  A  clatter  of  voices,  of  foreign  tongues 
and  unfamiliar  forms  of  English,  rattled  out  the 
gossip  of  the  neighborhood,  and  a  few  steps  away, 
a  belated  hurdy-gurdy  shook  forth  a  popular  tune. 

232 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         233 

Violet  cowered  against  the  nearest  wall.  She  was 
uncertain  as  to  how  to  proceed,  and  she  was  afraid 
to  stand  still.  There  seized  her  an  unreasoned  terror 
lest  all  this  seeming  escape  might  be  some  new  trick 
leading  into  some  new  trap.  A  policeman  passed 
with  heavy  tread,  but,  unmindful  of  Dyker's  assur 
ance,  the  girl  drew,  trembling,  as  far  away  from 
him  as  she  could.  Then,  when  her  straining  eyes 
saw  him  turn  at  the  next  corner  to  retrace  his  steps, 
she  made  sure  that  he  was  coming  back  to  recapture 
her,  and,  now  desperate,  she  faced  a  pair  of  solemn 
children  slowly  approaching  from  the  opposite  di 
rection. 

The  six-year-old  boy  to  whom  she  especially  ad 
dressed  herself  shook  an  uncomprehending  head,  but 
his  wiser  companion,  a  very  dirty  little  girl  of  seven, 
made  proud  answer. 

"  He  don't  to  speak  no  English,"  she  said.  "  He 
only  can  tell  things  out  of  Jewish.  But  I  tells  you. 
That  there's  your  street  right  behind  you.  Yiss, 
ma'am.  An'  your  house  is  by  the  two  on  that  there 
side." 

Violet's  lips  tried  to  form  a  word  of  thanks.  She 
turned,  as  the  girl  had  ordered,  into  the  rift  among 
the  brick  walls,  found  that,  once  it  had  traveled  be 
yond  the  depth  of  the  house  before  which  she  had 
been  standing,  it  opened  to  a  width  of  a  few  addi 
tional  feet,  and  so,  almost  creeping  through  the 
Stygian  passage  in  which  shone  only  one  far-away 
lamp,  she  felt  her  way  to  the  second  door. 

It  was  partially  open,  and  a  jet  of  blue  gas  in  the 
hallway  burned  overhead.  She  could  see  several 
doors  in  the  shadows,  but  all  were  closed.  She  heard 


234        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

a  dragging  step  coming  down  the  stairs.  She  drew 
against  the  wall  and  waited. 

The  step  was  slow  and  uncertain.  It  seemed  to 
consider  well  before  each  movement  forward,  but  it 
had  a  character  that  reassured  her.  It  was  the  same 
sort  of  step  with  which  her  father  was  wont  to 
return  home  after  his  occasional  carouses,  and  she 
knew  that  whoso  walked  in  that  fashion  was,  so 
long  as  one  kept  out  of  reach,  not  greatly  to  be 
feared.  She  remained  hidden  until  the  step  drew 
nearer,  until  the  dark  bulk  of  the  drunkard  slowly 
massed  itself  out  of  the  surrounding  darkness,  until 
it  had  brushed  by  her.  Then  she  spoke. 

"  Can  you  tell  me,"  she  asked,  "  if  there's  a  Miss 
Flanagan  lives  here?  " 

The  passerby  was  not  in  a  condition  where  voices 
from  nowhere  seemed  remarkable.  He  stopped 
and,  evidently  not  clear  as  to  just  whence  this  par 
ticular  voice  proceeded,  addressed  the  air  immedi 
ately  before  him. 

"  I  can  so,"  he  said. 

"Then  will  you,  please?" 

"Will  I  what?"  responded  the  passerby,  deter 
mined  that  the  air  should  be  more  specific. 

"  Will  you  please  tell  me?  " 

"Tell  you  what?" 

"Is  there  a  Miss  Flanagan  lives  here?" 

"  There  is  that.  There's  three  of  her,  an'  wan  of 
thim's  a  Missus.  Good-night." 

Awkwardly  he  touched  his  hat  to  the  air  and 
stumbled  out  into  the  alley. 

Violet  breathed  hard.  She  had  never  in  her  life 
before  been  in  a  tenement-house;  but  she  knew  that 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         235 

now  she  must  seek  a  door  through  which  some  ray 
of  light  gave  hint  of  waking  persons  within  and, 
knocking,  of  them  inquire  anew.  Around  her,  all 
the  doors  were  forbidding,  so,  timidly  and  with  a 
hand  tight  upon  the  shaking  rail,  she  softly  climbed 
the  decrepit  stairs. 

At  the  second  floor  a  shaft  of  yellow  light  stopped 
her. 

Here  was  a  door  that  was  open,  and  beyond  it, 
by  an  uncovered  deal  table  on  which  stood  a  rude 
kerosene  lamp,  sat  two  figures :  the  figure  of  an  old 
woman,  her  gnarled  hands  clasped  loosely  in  her 
aproned  lap,  her  dim  eyes  gazing  at  the  sightless  win 
dow,  and  the  figure  of  a  young  woman,  her  hands 
beneath  her  round  chin,  her  wide  eyes  on  a  naked 
baby  quietly  sleeping  in  a  clothes-basket  at  her  knee. 
The  floor  was  uncarpeted,  the  walls  unadorned,  the 
room  almost  bare  of  furniture;  but  on  the  face  of 
her  that  looked  into  the  past  and  in  the  face  of  her 
that  looked  into  the  future  there  was  peace. 

A  quick  stroke  of  pain  stabbed  the  onlooker's 
heart,  but  she  dragged  herself  ahead  and,  not  to 
disturb  the  baby,  spoke  without  knocking. 

The  old  woman  turned,  and  Violet  noticed  that 
the  eyes  which  could  see  so  far  behind  were  blind 
and  could  see  no  step  forward.  The  mother,  how 
ever,  spoke  kindly  and  gave  the  directions  that  the 
girl  needed;  but  Violet,  wanting  to  say  something 
about  the  baby  in  return,  and,  able  only  to  murmur 
formal  thanks,  pursued  her  climb  upward. 

She  found  at  last  the  door  that  she  was  certain 
must  be  Katie  Flanagan's,  but,  when  she  had  found 
it,  all  power  of  further  motion  suddenly  ceased. 


236        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Weakness,  shame,  and  fear  swept  over  her  like  a 
cloud  of  evil  gases  from  an  endangered  mine,  and 
she  swayed  against  the  panel  before  her. 

Inside,  Katie  and  the  shirtwaist-maker,  just  ready 
for  bed,  heard  the  faint  sound  without  and,  opening 
the  door,  caught  the  almost  fainting  figure  in  their 
arms.  The  dark  cloak  dropped  open,  disclosing  the 
crimson  kimona  beneath,  and  this,  awakening  Vio 
let's  one  dominating  passion — the  terror  of  detection 
and  consequent  recapture — roused  the  fugitive  a 
little.  She  staggered  away  from  the  assisting  hands, 
wrapped  the  cloak  tightly  around  her,  and  leaned, 
panting,  against  the  wall. 

"Miss — Miss  Flanagan?"  she  gasped. 

Katie  nodded  her  black  head. 

"  That's  me,"  she  said. 

"  I'm— I'm  the— I'm  Violet." 

The  Irish  girl  comprehended  quickly.  With  Irish 
tact  she  refused,  just  then,  to  hear  more;  with  Irish 
volubility  she  burst  into  exclamations  of  pity,  and 
with  ready  Irish  sympathy  she  took  Violet  in  her 
strong  arms. 

"  Put  her  on  my  cot,"  said  Carrie,  and  they  led 
her  there. 

They  took  away  her  cloak,  for  she  was  now  too 
weak  to  protest,  and,  though  they  did  pause  in  awe 
before  the  crimson  kimona,  they  hurried  to  make 
their  guest  comfortable.  The  Lithuanian  Jewess 
moved  silently  and  swiftly  about  with  that  calm 
competence  which  characterizes  her  people,  and 
Katie,  fanning  the  white  face  and  chafing  the  thin 
hands,  continued  to  croon  condolences. 

"  There  now !  "  she  at  last  smiled,  as  Violet's  blue 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         237 

eyes  opened.  "  Sure  you're  yourself  again  entirely. 
Don't  say  a  word,  not  one  word,  an'  just  tell  us  what 
ever  'tis  you  might  be  wantin'." 

"  Whiskey,"  gasped  Violet. 

The  girls  looked  at  each  other. 

"That's  all  right,"  said  the  Jewess,  quietly;  "I 
can  spare  it  " — and  she  handed  Katie  some  small 
change. 

The  Irish  girl  flung  a  shawl  over  her  head,  and 
ran  down  the  stairs.  She  went  into  the  side  door  of 
the  nearest  saloon,  entered  a  narrow  compartment, 
passed  the  money  through  a  hole  in  a  partition,  and 
was  given  a  small  flask  partly  filled.  Within  five 
minutes  she  had  returned,  and  Violet,  drinking  the 
contents  of  the  bottle  at  a  single  draught,  began  to 
revive. 

"  Are  you  hungry,  darlin'  ?  "  asked  Katie. 

Violet  shook  her  russet  head. 

"  No,"  she  answered,  "  I  couldn't  eat,  thanks. 
I'm  only  just  played  out." 

"  Poor  dear,  you  look  it.  But  you're  all  right 
now,  an'  you  can  rest  as  long  as  you  like.  Don't  you 
bother.  Don't  you  worry.  Don't  you  be  afraid. 
You  got  away  without  any  trouble,  did  you?  " 

'  Yes,"  said  Violet,  and  because  she  was  still  un 
able  to  frame  her  lips  to  adequate  thanks,  she  gave 
them  as  much  of  the  story  of  her  escape  as  she  could 
give  without  mention  of  the  name  of  her  rescuer, 
who  had  warned  her  that  he  must  not  be  publicly 
known  to  figure  in  the  case. 

"A  man?"  echoed  the  cynical  Katie.  "An'  he 
didn't  ask  nothin'  in  return?" 

"  No." 


238         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  He  must  be  worth  knowin',  that  man." 

"  He  only  wants  me  to  go  somewhere  an'  swear  to 
all  Rose  done  to  me." 

"  Oh !  " — Katie's  tone  showed  that  she  could  now 
account  for  the  gentleman's  generosity. — "  Well, 
don't  you  do  it." 

But  Violet  could  not  follow  her. 

"Why  not?"  she  asked. 

"  I  don't  know  just  why;  but  don't  you  do  it." 

"  I  promised,"  said  Violet. 

"  Och,  listen  to  the  poor  dear!  "  Katie  appealed 
to  her  fellow-lodger.  "  I  wonder  is  it  long  she 
thinks  he'd  be  keepin'  his  word  to  her." 

Her  own  word  freshened  the  ever-abiding  terror 
in  the  runaway's  heart,  but  Violet  said  no  more 
about  it. 

"Would  you  have  much  to  swear  to?"  asked 
Carrie,  seated  on  the  foot  of  the  cot. 

"  What  do  you  mean?  "  Violet  parried. 

"  She  means,  Violet "  began  Katie. 

The  fugitive,  in  her  new  surroundings,  shrank 
from  the  name. 

"  Don't !    Don't  call  me  that !  "  she  said. 

"  Sure  an'  ain't  it  the  name  you  gave  me  your 
self?" 

"  I  know,  but  I  don't  want  to  hear  it  ever  again. 
Call  me  Mary;  call  me  Mary " 

And  there,  face  to  face  with  a  new  danger,  Violet 
came  to  a  stop.  Her  captivity  had  taught  her  much 
of  bestiality,  but  it  had  taught  her  besides  only  that 
some  unknown,  tremendous  power  hated  her;  that 
she  was  debased  and  must  never,  at  whatever  cost  of 
further  suffering  to  herself,  permit  her  degradation 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         239 

to  attach  to  her  family;  that  she  must  escape,  but 
that  she  must  also  wholly  divorce  herself  from  all 
that  life  had  meant  her  to  be.  She  had  no  thought 
of  the  future;  she  had  only  a  realization  of  what 
had  been  and  what  was. 

"  Mary  what?  "  asked  Carrie. 

"  Mary  Morton,"  lied  Violet.  Perhaps  she  had 
heard  the  name  before;  perhaps  the  easy  alliteration 
brought  it  first  to  her  mind.  At  all  events,  she  re 
flected,  one  name  was  as  good  as  another,  so  long 
as  it  was  not  her  own. 

"  Would  you  have  much  to  swear  to?  "  Carrie 
was  continuing.  "  Is  it  as  bad  as  they  say — there?  " 

Violet  looked  at  the  round,  serious  face  before  her. 

"  I  don't  know  what  they  say,"  she  replied;  "  but 
it's  worse  than  anybody  can  say.  There's  a  lot  of 
it  you  can't  say,  because  there's  a  lot  of  it  there  ain't 
no  words  ever  been  made  up  for.  Just  you  pray 
God  you  won't  ever  have  to  find  out  how  bad  it  is." 

They  looked  at  her  and  saw  on  her  the  marks  of 
which  she  was  not  yet  aware. 

Katie  bent  over  and  swiftly  kissed  the  fevered 
forehead  under  its  tumbled  russet  hair. 

"  You  poor  woman,"  she  said  with  unintended  im 
plication,  "  an'  how  many  years  did  you  have  to 
stand  it?" 

"  It  wasn't  years;  it  was — it  was  only  weeks." 

"  What?  An'  they  could  get  a  grown  woman  like 
you?" 

Violet  tried  to  smile. 

"  How  old  do  you  think  I  am?  "  she  asked. 

Katie  made  what  she  considered  a  charitable  reply. 

"Twenty-five?" 


24o         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I'm  not  seventeen." 

Katie  began  to  busy  herself  about  the  room,  and 
Carrie  turned  her  head. 

"  Ah,  well,"  said  Katie,  "  you're  tired  out,  an' 
it's  'most  mornin'.  We  must  all  go  to  sleep  now." 

"  I  only  put  on  long  dresses  in  April,"  said  Violet. 

But  Katie  seemed  not  to  hear  her.  She  hurried 
the  arrangements  for  the  night. 

"  Sleep  as  long  as  you  like  in  the  morning,"  said 
Carrie;  "and  if  you  can  wear  any  of  our  things, 
wear  'em.  We  have  to  get  up  early,  but  don't  mind 
us." 

The  latter  injunction  was  unnecessary.  Though 
Violet  had  for  some  time  been  excited  by  her  escape, 
that  excitement  had  already  given  place  to  utter  ex 
haustion.  The  lamp  had  scarcely  been  extinguished 
before,  with  throbbing  head,  she  passed  into  a  sleep 
that  was  almost  coma,  and  the  lamp  that  was  burn 
ing  when  she  opened  her  aching  eyes  was  the  lamp 
of  midmorning. 

She  was  alone  and  afraid  to  be  alone.  Her  head 
seemed  splitting.  She  saw  the  milk  and  rolls  that 
Katie  had  set  out  for  her  on  the  oilcloth-covered 
table,  but  her  stomach  revolted  at  the  thought  of 
food,  and  her  poisoned  nerves  cried  out  for  alcohol. 
She  got  up  and  managed  to  pull  on  some  of  the 
clothes  belonging  to  her  two  hostesses. 

From  her  first  glance  at  the  mirror,  she  drew 
back  in  bewilderment.  During  all  her  imprisonment 
she  had  been  used,  through  her  gradual  change,  to 
compare  her  morning  appearance  with  that  of  her 
fellow  slaves;  but  now  there  was  fresh  in  her  mind 
the  standard,  not  of  those  pale  and  worn,  though 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         241 

often  fat  and  hardened,  convicts,  but  of  the  pair 
of  healthy  girls  that  had,  the  night  before,  sheltered 
her;  and  from  that  standard  her  very  image  in  the 
glass  seemed  to  withdraw  in  horror.  Lacking  rouge, 
her  cheeks,  once  so  pink  and  firm,  were  pasty  and 
pendant;  her  lips  hung  loose,  her  blue  eyes  were  dull 
and  blurred;  even  her  hair  appeared  colorless  and 
brittle.  Little  lines  had  formed  at  the  corners  of 
her  eyes;  her  skin  seemed  rough  and  cracked,  and 
other  lines  were  already  faintly  showing  from  her 
nostrils  to  the  corners  of  her  mouth. 

She  sat  down  on  'the  cot,  sick  and  shivering. 
When  she  noticed  a  small  pile  of  bedding  in  the 
corner  behind  the  gas-stove,  she  shook  at  the  mem 
ory  of  another  such  pile  on  another  terrible  morning, 
and  by  the  time  she  had  realized  that  one  of  her 
friends  must  have  slept  there  in  order  to  provide  an 
extra  couch,  she  was  too  wracked  by  suffering,  physi 
cal  and  mental,  to  feel,  at  once,  any  great  gratitude. 
The  fever  throbbed  in  her  wrists,  beat  in  her  heart, 
hammered  in  her  brain.  She  did  not  dare  go  to 
the  street  for  whiskey  or  medicine.  At  every  sound 
on  the  stairs  she  started  up  in  the  assurance  that  her 
keepers  had  come  to  recover  her,  and  when,  in  the 
early  afternoon,  a  loud  knocking  sounded  on  the 
door,  she  fell,  in  unresponding  silence,  before 
Katie's  flaring  lithograph  of  Our  Lady  of  the 
Rosary. 

"  Hello  in  there  1  "  called  a  not  overcautious  voice. 
"  I  want  to  talk  to  Miss  Violet!  " 

Violet  raised  her  clasped  hands  to  the  printed  face 
before  her. 

"  Don't  let  them  take  me !  "  she  whispered  in  a 


242 

prayer  to  that  visible  sign  of  a  power  she  had  never 
before  addressed.  "  Don't  let  them  take  me !  " 

"Open  up,  can't  you?"  the  voice  insisted.  "I 
know  there's  somebody  inside,  an',  honest,  I'm  not 
going  to  hurt  you  I  " 

Violet's  hands  fell.  The  voice,  she  realized,  was 
at  least  unfamiliar. 

"Come  on,"  -it  wheedled.  "I'm  all  right;  I'm 
from  Mr.  Dyker." 

"  What  do  you  want?  "  she  inquired. 

"  He  said  Miss  Violet  would  know,"  came  the 
answer.  "  He  said  I  would  be  expected — that  it'd 
be  all  right  if  I  just  told  you  I  came  from  him." 

Violet  had  not  forgotten  Katie's  warning,  but  she 
was  unable  wholly  to  doubt  the  one  man  that  had 
befriended  her.  She  opened  the  door. 

The  pink-and-white  young  clerk  that  entered  was 
much  embarrassed,  and  his  hostess,  in  her  fever,  did 
not  ease  him.  Nevertheless,  after  many  hesitations 
on  his  own  part,  and  more  repetitions  and  explana 
tions  made  necessary  by  Violet,  he  at  last  convinced 
her  that  he  did  indeed  come  from  Wesley  Dyker, 
and  that  there  was  waiting  around  the  corner  the 
cab  that  would  convey  her  to  an  office  where  she 
could  begin  the  redemption  of  her  pledge. 

Almost  in  a  dream,  and  too  ill  now  much  to  care 
what  happened  to  her,  she  followed  the  messenger. 
Dazedly  she  greeted  Dyker  in  the  cab;  confusedly 
she  left  that  conveyance  for  an  office  where  she  an 
swered  interminable  questions  put  to  her  by  another 
young  man  who,  she  was  told,  was  an  Assistant  Dis 
trict  Attorney;  vaguely  she  heard  Dyker  assure  this 
official,  as  she  affixed  a  signature  to  an  offered  paper, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         243 

that  Wesley  would  himself  guarantee  her  appear 
ance  whenever  it  was  required,  and  when  she  was 
at  last  wheeled  back  and  had  climbed  the  stairs  and, 
alone,  fallen  again  upon  Carrie's  cot,  the  only  one 
of  recent  facts  concerning  which  she  was  at  all 
certain  was  that  she  had  said  she  was  a  native 
of  Pittsburgh  and  that  her  name  was  Mary 
Morton. 

Katie  and  Carrie,  returning  together,  found  her 
flushed  and  babbling  nonsense.  When  they  ap 
proached  her,  she  did  not  recognize  them,  and  then, 
for  an  hour,  they  could  get  from  her  only  the  mo 
notonous  repetition: 

"  Don't  let  them  get  me !  Don't  tell  them  my 
name!  " 

It  was  eight  o'clock  before  the  patient,  quieted 
by  sympathy  and  stimulated  by  whiskey,  could  be 
taken  to  the  nearest  drugstore,  and  there,  as  soon 
as  the  experienced  druggist  set  eyes  on  her,  he  re 
fused  to  prescribe. 

He  beckoned  Katie  to  a  corner. 

"That  girl's  got  to  go  to  a  hospital,"  he  said; 
"  and  if  I  was  you,  I  wouldn't  lose  much  time  in 
getting  her  there." 

Katie  the  competent  lost  none.  After  another 
drink  to  stifle  possible  protest,  Violet  was  taken 
upon  a  car  to  Sixteenth  Street,  and  was  then  walked 
quickly  westward.  During  all  the  way  she  did 
not  speak,  and,  when  she  reached  the  hospital's 
fortunately  empty  receiving-ward,  she  was  nearly 
unconscious. 

A  white-capped  nurse  received  the  little  party,  the 
young  doctor,  in  shirt-sleeves  and  duck  trousers,  hov- 


244         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

ering  in  the  background  among  the  glass  shelves 
agleam  with  instruments  of  polished  steel. 

"What's  the  trouble?"  asked  the  nurse. 

"  It's  that  that  we've  come  to  find  out  of  y'ou," 
answered  Katie. 

The  nurse  nodded  to  the  doctor. 

He  came  forward  and  made  a  quick  examination. 

"  Bring  this  woman  inside  and  put  her  on  the 
table,"  he  ordered.  "  And  you  girls,  stop  where  you 
are." 

Her  head  thrown  back,  her  dry  mouth  wide,  and 
her  russet  hair  falling,  the  unresisting  Violet  was 
carried  behind  a  door  that  shut  smartly  after 
her. 

Too  scared  to  speak,  Katie  and  her  companion 
stood  outside.  Five  minutes  passed.  Then  ten. 
After  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  the  door  reopened. 

"What's  this  patient's  name?"  he  asked. 

"  Mary  Morton,"  said  Carrie. 

"  Where  does  she  live?  " 

Katie  gave  her  own  address,  and  the  doctor, 
a  pad  of  printed  forms  in  hand,  noted  both  the 
answers. 

That  done,  he  paused  and  bit  his  pencil. 

"  Married?  "  he  asked  quickly. 

"  Who  ?  "  parried  Katie.     "  Me  ?  " 

"  No ;  the  patient." 

"  Well,  now,"  began  Katie,  "  I  can't  see  as 
that's " 

But  the  calm  voice  of  Carrie  interrupted. 

"  She  is  married,"  she  said. 

The  doctor  pursed  incredulous  lips. 

"  Where's  her  husband?  "  he  demanded. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         245 

Katie,  who  had  caught  the  need  of  the  moment, 
jumped  into  the  breach. 

"  Where  a  lot  of  them  are,"  she  responded,  "  an' 
where  as  many  more  might  as  well  be,  for  all  the 
use  they  are  to  their  poor  wives." 

"Where's  that?" 

"Faith,  it's  you,  sir,  ought  to  know:  you're  the 
man." 

"Dead?" 

"  Run  away." 

"  Not  much  later  than  yesterday,  did  he?  Well, 
I  must  find  her  nearest  relative  or  friend.  Are  you 
either?" 

Katie's  face  lenghtened. 

"  Och,  doctor,"  she  said,  "  you  don't  mean 
to — but  it  can't  be  that  there's  goin'  to  be  a 
baby!" 

The  young  interne  grinned.  Then,  serious  again, 
he  answered: 

"  No,  there  is  not.  I  only  wish  it  was  so  simple. 
Where  are  her  folks  ?  " 

"  She's  none  in  the  world,  an'  no  money.  The 
hard  truth  is,  doctor,  that  it's  a  charity-patient  she'll 
have  to  be." 

"That's  all  right;  but  are  you  her  nearest 
friends?" 

"  Yes,  doctor." 

"  That'll  do,  I  guess.  She's  a  nervous  wreck — 
among  other  things.  We've  first  of  all  got  to  get 
her  round  from  that  condition,  and  then  I'll  have 
to  secure  either  her  own  or  your  permission,  as  her 
nearest  friends,  to  do  something  more." 

"  More?  "  repeated  Katie.    "  Ain't  it  bad  enough 


246         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

as  it  is  ?    What  more  do  you  mean  to  do  to  the  poor 
—girl?" 

"  I  don't  mean  to  do  anything  myself,  but  this  is 
a  common  enough  kind  of  case  around  here  to  make 
me  certain  what  the  resident  surgeon  will  do:  he'll 
operate." 


XVII 

"A  NET  BY  THE  WAYSIDE" 

HERMANN     HOFFMANN,     passing    one 
evening  to  the  little  clothes-press  behind  the 
bar  in  Ludwig  Schleger's  saloon,  and  putting 
on  the  canvas  coat  that  was  his  badge  of  office,  heard 
the  voice  of  the  proprietor  calling  his  name,   and 
turned  to  see  that  stout  German-American  beckoning 
him  to  enter  the  back-room  where,  a  month  before, 
O'Malley  had  held  with  Wesley  Dyker  that  confer 
ence  which  had  proved  so  disastrous  to  Rose  Legere. 

He  walked  through  the  open  door,  whistling  his 
Teutonic  melody.  He  had  not  that  fear  of  his  em 
ployer  which  most  employees  have  of  the  man  for 
whom  they  work.  Schleger  had  proved  himself  leni 
ent  and  good-natured,  and  Hermann,  whose  cheerful 
round  face  and  easy  smile  did  not  interfere  with  the 
use  of  a  knotted  arm  and  a  mighty  fist,  was  quite 
aware  that  there  was  no  complaint  justly  to  be  made 
against  the  manner  in  which  he  performed  his  alloted 
tasks. 

"  Hoffmann,"  said  Schleger,  smiling,  "  you're  all 
right." 

"  Sure,"  grinned  Hermann. 
'  Yes,"  pursued  the  proprietor,  "  I  been  thinkin' 
about  you  that  you  sure  have  made  good." 

"  I'm  glad  you  vas  sadisfied,  Schleger." 

"  I  am  satisfied;  but  I  think  you  need  a  little  more 


248         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

time  off  now  an'  then.  I  haven't  got  nothin'  to  do 
this  evenin'.  I'll  take  your  place." 

Hermann's  eyes  brightened  with  unaffected  pleas 
ure.  It  had  not  always  been  pleasant  to  work  in  the 
nights  when  Katie  was  all  day  busy  in  the  shop. 

"  Thanks,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  nodded  Schleger,  benignantly;  "it  will 
be  like  old  times  for  me.  You  take  a  night  off." 

"  Shall  I  start  out  righd  avay?  " 

"  Certainly. — Of  course  you  understand  I'll  want 
you  around  here  the  day  of  the  primaries." 

Hermann  nodded. 

"  And  Hermann,  there's  somethin'  else  I've  been 
meanin'  to  talk  to  you  about,  and  kep'  forgettin'  till 
O'Malley  reminded  me  of  it  again  this  afternoon." 

Hoffmann,  pulling  off  his  white  jacket,  stopped 
with  arms  extended. 

"  O'Malley?  "  he  said  in  a  strained  voice.  "  Vat's 
dot  man  got  to  do  vith  me?  " 

"  Well,  you  know  he  don't  miss  no  tricks  no- 
wheres,  an'  some  time  back  I  was  tellin'  him  what  a 
good  man  you  was,  an'  he  said  we  ought  to  get  you 
a  little  more  active  for  him.  A  fellow  behind  a  bar 
can  do  a  whole  lot  that  way,  you  know, — an'  make  a 
good  thing  of  it." 

"  I  know,"  replied  Hermann,  ripping  off  the  coat, 
"  but  I  ain't  no  politician." 

"  Nobody  said  you  was,  but  all  the  fellows  help  a 
little." 

"Sure;  only  I  don't." 

"  Why  not  ?  We  want  to  do  well  for  the  slate  this 
time.  Wesley  Dyker's  on  it;  you  know  him;  he's 
all  right." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         249 

"  I  ain't  no  politician,  Schleger." 

This  stolid  attitude  plainly  began  to  puzzle  the 
proprietor. 

"  Don't  be  a  fool,  Hoffmann,"  he  said.  "  The 
boys  all  have  their  eye  on  you,  an'  O'Malley  don't 
forget  any  of  his  friends." 

"  Schleger,  I  got  my  own  friends,  und  I  make 
my  own  friends.  I  don't  vant  nussing  I  don't  earn 
from  nobody." 

"  But  that  sort  of  thing  won't  look  right,"  argued 
Schleger.  "  You  see,  you're  registered  from 
here— 

"  No  I  ain't,  Schleger;  I'm  registered  from  my 
own  blace." 

"Well,  I  didn't  know  that;  you  didn't  tell  me, 
an'  so  I  registered  you  from  here." 

Hoffmann's  pink  cheeks  became  red.  He  folded 
his  coat  neatly  over  his  arm. 

"  Vatch  here,  Schleger,"  he  began.  "  I  ain't  no 
politician.  I  don't  care " 

But  he  bit  his  lip  and  mastered  himself  to  silence. 

The  proprietor  saw  this  and  appreciated  the  self- 
control  that  it  manifested.  There  had  been  a  time 
when  he  had  felt  as  Hermann  felt  now,  and  so  he 
was  not  disposed  to  use  harsh  argument.  He  came 
close  to  Hoffmann  and,  still  smiling,  dropped  his 
voice  to  a  whisper. 

"  That's  all  right,"  he  said,  soothingly.  "  I  guess 
I  know  how  you  look  at  it.  Don't  say  that  I  said 
so,  but  we'll  let  the  matter  drop  if  you  only  lay  low 
a  little  and  keep  quiet.  You  know  the  brewery's 
backin'  me  in  this  saloon,  an'  you  know,  with  the 
brewery  pushm'  me  all  the  time  for  its  money,  I 


250         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

couldn't  run  the  place  a  month  if  I  didn't  keep  the 
side-door  open  Sundays.  Well,  then,  how  could  I 
keep  the  place  workin'  Sundays  if  it  wasn't  for 
O'Malley?  Just  try  not  to  be  openly  again'  him, 
that's  all." 

Hermann  did  not  commit  himself,  but  his  tone 
had  softened  when,  in  reply,  he  asked: 

"  Und  should  I  take  to-night  off  ?  " 

"  Certainly  you  should.  Go  along  now,  an'  fer- 
get  it." 

He  went,  but  as  he  walked  down  the  avenue, 
"  Die  Wacht  Am  Rhein  "  issued  from  his  lips  to  the 
time-  of  a  funeral-march. 

His  sole  consolation  lay  in  the  fact  that,  in  the 
recent  glimpses  he  had  secured  of  Katie,  that  young 
lady  had  begun  to  evince  signs  of  relenting  from  her 
former  attitude  of  celibacy.  He  knew  that  she  had 
gradually  ceased  to  descant  upon  the  impossibility 
of  his  supporting  a  wife,  and  he  thought  that  she 
was  entertaining  hopes  of  a  promotion  in  the  shop 
to  a  position  where  her  own  earnings,  added  to  his, 
would  make  a  comfortable  living-wage  for  two. 

What  he  did  not  know — and  this  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  Katie  would  not  tell  it  to  him — was  that, 
whatever  their  prospects  for  the  future,  both  Katie 
and  her  roommate  were  still  engaged  in  that  battle 
with  poverty  and  temptation  which  had  lessened 
scarcely  one  whit  since  its  beginning.  For  the  former 
the  fortunes  of  war  were  less  than  ever  favorable, 
and  for  the  latter  the  most  that  was  expected  was 
the  maintenance  of  her  stand  in  the  face  of  every 
armed  reason  to  surrender  or  retreat. 

The   strike    dragged   along    its   wearied   length. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         251 

Popular  sympathy,  which  had  aided  the  shirtwaist- 
makers  in  their  former  rebellion,  had  lost  its  interest 
in  the  cause,  and,  as  the  newspapers  said  less,  the 
employers  became  more  demonstrative.  Hired  thugs 
guarded  the  factories  and  beat  whatever  young 
women  dared,  by  the  simplest  words,  to  plead,  in 
public,  with  the  scab  laborers.  When  these  battles 
occurred  the  police,  knowing  well  the  interests  of 
their  masters,  arrested  the  mere  girls  for  assault  and 
battery  upon  the  thugs,  forcing  them  to  remain,  if 
detained,  on  benches  with  women  old  in  immorality 
and  crime;  and  the  magistrates  before  whom  these 
dangerous  female  criminals  were  hailed,  not  forget 
ting  which  party  to  the  suit  could  vote  at  the  coming 
election,  would  often  send  the  offenders  to  the  Re 
formatory  or  the  Island,  where  they  could  no  longer 
interfere,  or  would  impose  fines  calculated  still  more 
to  deplete  a  strike-fund  already  pitiably  shrunken. 
Some  of  the  unionists  had  already  laid  down  their 
arms  and  returned  to  the  factories;  more  had  gone 
over  to  another  enemy  and  disappeared  beneath  the 
dark  current  of  the  underworld.  The  rest — and  Car 
rie  was  among  the  number — must  soon  come  face  to 
face  with  starvation. 

Katie's  difficulties,  though  as  yet  less  physical, 
were  scarcely  less  poignant.  She  found  that  she  was 
rarely  left  long  in  one  portion  of  the  Lennox  shop. 
From  the  chief  woman's-hosiery  department,  she 
was  shifted,  without  warning,  to  the  handkerchief 
counter,  and  thence,  again  with  no  explanation,  she 
was  sent  to  help  in  the  main  aisle  at  a  table  where 
there  was  a  special  sale  of  stockings  at  reduced 
prices. 


252         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

At  first  these  frequent  shiftings  appeared  to  result 
from  no  apparent  cause.  She  was  fined  as  much  as 
the  other  clerks,  but  no  more  than  they,  and  she 
could  in  no  wise  account  for  the  changes.  But  at 
last  she  noticed  that  after  a  shift  for  the  worse  the 
sacrosanct  Mr.  Porter  would  usually  happen  by  and 
open  a  conversation,  and  then  she  remembered  that, 
before  such  a  shift,  this  same  side-whiskered  gentle 
man  had  generally  made  overtures,  and  that 
those  overtures  had  not  been  well  received. 
The  theory  arising  from  these  observations  she 
resolved  to  confirm.  After  the  next  move  she 
made  deliberate  eyes  at  the  man  she  detested, 
and  she  was  next  day  promoted,  with  a  twenty-five 
cent  increase  of  pay  per  week,  to  the  silk-stocking 
counter.  From  that  day  she  saw  her  warfare  de 
veloping  into  a  dangerous  game  of  hide-and-seek  in 
which  Mr.  Porter  was  "  It,"  and  from  that  day 
dated  her  increasing  tendency  to  reconsider  the  de 
termination  not  to  marry  Hermann  Hoffmann. 

For  Violet,  meanwhile,  the  young  interne's  proph 
esy  had  been  fulfilled.  Four  days  after  her  admission 
to  the  hospital  there  had  been  performed  upon  her 
that  operation  which  had  been  made  necessary  by 
her  servitude,  but  to  which,  had  she  been  consulted, 
her  fears  would  never  have  allowed  her  to  consent. 
For  three  weeks  she  lay  in  her  narrow  bed  among 
other  sufferers,  and,  when  at  last  the  fiction  of  dis 
charging  her  as  "  cured "  had  been  accomplished, 
and  the  five-cent  carfare  donated  by  the  hospital  to 
charity-patients  had  been  given,  she  had  been  met 
by  Katie  and  Carrie,  and  had  tottered  between  them 
to  their  room. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         253 

During  another  week  she  had  now  rested  there. 
Her  eyes  were  still  sunken,  dull,  dark-rimmed;  her 
cheeks  white  and  transparently  thin.  The  knuckles 
of  her  fingers  seemed  to  have  grown  larger,  and  her 
hands  were  nearly  transparent.  But  her  lips,  though 
bloodless,  had  gained  a  new  firmness.  Clearly  or 
deeply  she  could  never  think,  without  help  from  a 
stronger  and  better  mind;  yet  she  had  made  what 
use  she  might  of  her  long  leisure  and  had  resolved, 
more  or  less  definitely,  upon  what  she  would  do  with 
her  life. 

"  I  went  out  an'  walked  a  block  by  myself  yester 
day,"  she  confessed  to  her  two  friends  early  on  the 
evening  of  Hermann's  political  discussion  with  his 
employer;  "an'  I  didn't  get  any  tired  an'  wasn't 
hardly  any  scared.  Now  I  want  you  to  take  me  for 
a  longer  walk  to-night  an'  then  by  to-morrow  I'll  be 
all  right." 

They  protested  that  she  must  not  spur  her  con 
valescence,  but  she  was  determined.  It  was,  she 
knew,  impossible  for  them  much  longer  to  support 
her,  and  the  last  of  her  one  ten-dollar  bill  had  long 
ago  been  spent. 

"  I'll  tell  you  what  we  might  do,"  Carrie  at  last 
suggested.  "  There's  some  sort  of  a  concert  over 
at  the  settlement  to-night.  We  might  go  to  that. 
I  used  to  know  some  of  the  ladies  there,  and  there's 
always  a  chance  that  they  can  get  you  a  job." 

While  she  was  speaking  Hermann's  whistle,  more 
cheerful  now  than  when  he  had  left  the  saloon, 
sounded  on  the  stairs,  and  Katie,  surprised  and  glad, 
opened  the  door  to  his  knock. 

"  Late  to  your  work  again,"  she  said,  with  a  smile 


254        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

that  belied  her.  "  How'll  you  ever  be  holdin'  that 
job,  anyhow?  " 

The  newcomer's  only  answer  was  a  courageous 
and  unrebuked  kiss.  He  turned  to  Carrie. 

"Vat  you  sink  of  such  a  vay  of  meetin'  me?" 
he  appealed.  "  My  boss  gives  me  a  nighd  off,  und 
I  haf  seen  my  girl  not  fur  ten  days  und  den 

He  paused  as  his  unrecognizing  eye  fell  upon 
Violet. 

"  Egscuse  me,"  he  began.    "  I  didn't  see 

"  Of  course  you  didn't  see  it  was  your  old  friend 
Violet  that  was  an'  Miss  Morton  that  is,"  inter 
rupted  Katie,  with  a  quick  desire  to  shield  her  charge. 
"  You're  gettin'  that  near-sighted  I  wonder  how  you 
can  tell  a  whiskey-glass  from  a  beer-stein." 

Hermann  hurried  forward  in  rosy  embarrassment 
and  saved  Violet  from  rising.  He  took  her  frail 
hand  in  his  big  paw  and  poured  out  a  tumbling 
stream  of  polite  lies  upon  the  matter  of  her  health. 

"  I  guess  it  ain't  quite  as  good  as  you  say,"  replied 
Violet;  "but  it  soon  will  be.  Have  you — I  didn't 
get  no  news  while  I  was  sick.  Have  you  heard  any 
thing  about — things?" 

"You  knew  Rose's  place  was  pinched?" 

"  Yes,  Katie  told  me  that." 

"  Well,  dey  had  some  trouble  gettin'  pail  fur 
her.  Efferybody  vas  afraid  fur  to  do  it  vith  O'Mal- 
ley  after  her.  Still,  dey  vorked  it  somevays  und  no 
body  thought  but  she'd  jump  it  und  run  avay;  but 
she  didn't.  She  tried,  but  O'Malley  had  central 
office  men  keepin'  eyes  on  her,  und  she  can't  leaf 
town." 

Katie  and  Carrie  were  busying  themselves  in  the 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         255 

preparation  of  the  supper,  and  the  German  seated 
himself  beside  the  invalid. 

"  Mr.  Hoffmann,"  she  said,  "  I've  been  tryin'  to 
think  of  lots  of  things  while  I've  been  sick,  an'  I'd 
like  to  know  how  it  is  that  women  like  Miss  Rose 
are  allowed?  " 

He  looked  at  her,  hesitating,  but  her  eyes  were 
frankly  curious. 

"  Dot's  von  long  story,"  he  answered  in  his  slow 
tones,  "  un'  dem  as  can  tell  it  best  is  most  all  in 
deir  houses  or  in  deir  graves,  or  else,  in  de  streets." 

"  Then  I  guess  I  was  lucky  to  get  away." 

"  If  you  don't  mind  me  sayin'  it — yes,  miss." 

"  But  don't  the  girls  get  free  when  the  houses  are 
pinched?  " 

"No,"  said  Hermann,  as  gently  as  he  could; 
"  dey  don't  get  free.  Ofer  to  de  Night  Court  a 
voman  has  taken  five  s'ousand  to  a  blace  she  has, 
und  how  many  sink  you  didn't  go  back  to  de  vork 
again?  Less'n  von  hundret  und  fifty." 

"  I  don't  see  how  they  could,"  said  Violet. 

Hermann  could  not  see  how  they  could  do  any 
thing  else,  but  he  only  shrugged  his  broad  shoulders. 

"  They  don't  last  long  anyvays,"  he  remarked. 

'  You  mean  they  die  soon?  " 

"  Effery  five  year  all  de  girls  is  new :  it's  as  sure 
as  life  insurance." 

The  girl  shuddered,  but  mastered  herself. 

"  Don't  mind  that,"  she  reassured  him.  "  I  want 
to  know — honest.  Katie  and  Carrie  won't  be  both 
ered " 

;<  We  can't  hear  a  word  you're  sayin',  darlin'," 
laughed  Katie. 


256         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  An',  honest,"  Violet  concluded.  "  There's  some 
things  I  think  I've  got  to  learn  so's  I  can  see  it — 
see  it  all." 

She  appealed,  it  happened,  to  an  authority.  Her 
mann  supplemented  his  Marx  with  facts  and  statis 
tics  of  a  later  date,  especially  upon  the  point  at  issue, 
and  he  was  only  too  glad  to  find  in  Violet  the  listener 
that  he  could  never  discover  in  Katie. 

"You're  righd,"  he  said;  "  und  the  only  pity  is 
dot  more  people  don't  try  to  more  about  it  learn. 
If  dey  did,  maybe  ve'd  all  open  our  eyes  some." 

And  he  proceeded  to  open  Violet's  eyes  not  a 
little.  He  told  her  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  girls  that  are  annually  caught  in  the  great  net; 
of  how  five  thousand  new  ones  are  every  year  needed 
to  maintain  Chicago's  standing  supply  of  twenty-five 
thousand;  of  how  Boston,  Philadelphia,  New  Or 
leans,  San  Francisco — all  the  cities  and  the  towns- 
are  served  proportionately,  and  of  how,  above  all, 
from  the  crowded  East  Side  of  New  York,  there  are 
dragged  each  week  hundreds  of  children  and  young 
women  no  one  of  whom,  if  sold  outright,  brings  as 
much  as  a  capable  horse. 

"  Some  ve  bring  in,"  he  said,  "  und  some  ve  send 
out.  Ve  take  from  Italy,  und  ve  send  to  Sous  Amer 
ica.  From  all  ofer  the  vorld  ve  take,  und  to  all 
ofer  the  vorld  ve  send." 

"You  don't  always  blame  the  girls?" 

"  Plame  dem?  A  girl  as  lived  by  us,  she  did 
tucking  in  a  undervear  factory.  She  has  coffee  und 
a  roll  fur  preakfast,  tea  und  a  roll  fur  lunch,  von 
biece  of  bacon  und  von  egg  fur  supper  effery  nighd. 
Ten  hours  a  day  in  a  bad  smelling  room,  crowded 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         257 

vis  ozzer  girls,  she  runs  dot  machine.  Part  de  year 
she  has  no  vork,  because  always  de  factory  does 
not  run,  but  vhen  de  years  ends,  dot  machine,  makin' 
four  dousand  stitches  a  minute,  she  has  tucked  dree 
miles  of  undervear  und  got  paid  dree  hundred  dol 
lars.  Do  I  plame  such  a  girl  if  she  easy  comes  to 
belief  a  paid  veasel  as  makes  lofe  to  her  und  says 
he  marries  her  und  gets  her  avay  from  a  factory?  " 

"  All  of  the  girls  don't  come  from  such  hard  jobs 
though." 

"So?    Look  now!" 

He  took  from  an  inside  pocket  a  fistful  of  soiled 
envelopes  and  shuffled  them  until  he  found  one  on 
which  he  had  transcribed  some  figures. 

"  Yesderday  afternoon  to  dis  Astor  Library  I 
found  a  report  vat  vas  made  by  people  sent  out 
by  de  State  of  Massachusetts.  It  got  a  kind  of 
census  from  four  dousand  vomen  in  sixty  different 
cities,  all  ofer.  Before  dey  vent  bad,  five  hundret 
vas  garment-vorkers,  und  eight  hundret  vas  rope- 
makers,  milliners,  laundry  people,  paper-box,  cigar 
und  cigarette  makers,  candy-box  packers,  or  vorked 
in  textile  mills  or  shoe  factories.  All  dem,  see, 
vorked  in  de  poor  paid  trades,  und  a  hundret  und 
sixteen  come  from  department-stores,  und  dot's  as 
bad  as  Katie'll  tell  you.  Vorse  yet  de  job  of  house- 
servant — sixty  per  cent,  vas  dot.  Und  all  de  rest — 
all  de  ozzer  sixty-two  per  cent. — vere  girls  who 
hadn't  had  not  jobs,  und  dey  had  to  live  und  couldn't 
no  ozzer  vay  earn  a  livin' !  " 

"  Then  you  think,"  asked  Violet,  "  they  wouldn't 
go  wrong  if  they  could  get  decent  work  at  decent 
wages?  " 


258        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Hermann  looked  at  her  quickly. 

"Vouldyou?"  he  asked. 

She  shivered  and  shook  her  head  and  Hermann, 
seeing  that  the  heat  of  his  zeal  had  led  him  into 
a  personal  appeal  that  all  his  normally  slow  instincts 
prompted  him  to  avoid,  hurried  back  to  the  safe 
ground  of  generalities. 

"  Nobody  vat  knows,"  he  said,  "  could  belief  it. 
Nobody  vat  knows  could  belief  girls'd  go  into  such 
a  life,  or  once  dey  got  into  it  stay  dere,  because  dey 
vanted  to.  Veil,  vat  den?  Ve  must  "find  out  vhy 
is  it  dey  gets  in  und  vhy  dey  stay.  It  is  because 
all  de  whole  luckier  vorld  lets  dem  be  kep'  fast,  und, 
first  und  foremost,  because  all  de  whole  luckier  vorld 
lets  dose  factories  dey  come  from  be  bad  blaces,  und 
couldn't  gif  dose  ozzer  sixty-two-per-cent  girls  no 
ozzer  vay  to  earn  a  livin'  yet." 

Violet  thought  again,  as  she  still  so  often  thought, 
of  Max. 

"  An'  what  about  the  men  that  start  them?  "  she 
inquired. 

Hermann  brought  his  heavy  fist  down  upon  his 
knee. 

"  Dem  too!  "  he  said.  "  Dem  is  de  vorst  mens 
in  de  vorld.  If  I  can  hate  any  man,  dey  is  him. 
It  makes  my  red  blood  to  steam  und  my  skin  to  get 
all  brickly  to  see  dem  or  sink  of  dem.  But  I  know 
dot  dey,  too,  are  results  of  conditions,  und  dey  sink 
dot  dey  are  doing  kindness  to  de  girls  by  not  letting 
dem  go  to  chail  or  starve.  De  vorst  mens  in  de 
vorld — next  to  politicians  as  lets  dem  live  und  takes 
most  dot  dey  earn !  Und  de  politicians  demselves 
are  only  vat  dot  big  system  as  makes  us  all  vork  for 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         259 

less  as  ve  earn,  und  makes  us  all  pay  more  as  ve 
can — only  vat  de  big  system  makes  dem !  " 

Violet  understood  but  partially;  yet  she  had  seen 
enough  to  know  that  the  slavery  must  have  its  politi 
cal  side,  and  it  was  concerning  this  that  she  now 
asked. 

That  Hermann  made  wholly  clear.  He  told  her 
the  story  of  the  growth  of  political  parties,  the  de 
velopment  of  political  machines,  the  necessary  prey 
ing  of  these  machines,  in  every  city,  first  upon 
gambling  and  then,  as  that  passed,  upon  prostitution, 
and  of  how  this  meant  both  money  and  votes. 

As  he  talked,  she  learned  how  this  brought  into 
being  the  "  cadets  " — the  followers  of  the  low  heel 
ers — who  scoured  their  own  and  other  towns,  hang 
ing  about  the  doors  of  factories,  tenements,  shops — 
wherever  the  life  was  so  hard  as  to  drive  those  who 
lived  it  to  despair — themselves  impelled  by  economic 
conditions,  by  the  choice  between  hard  work  and 
small  pay  on  the  one  hand  and  base  work  and  better 
pay  on  the  other,  and  themselves  forced  into  the 
"  gangs  "  of  childish  mauraders  while  at  the  primary 
schools,  and  so  trained  upward,  step  by  step,  to  the 
"  gang  "  of  the  politician.  She  learned  how,  after 
the  last  outcry,  a  popular  leader  had  struck  a  cadet, 
in  the  presence  of  the  press-agents,  and  then,  when 
this  one  blow  was  taken  as  the  end  of  the  infamous 
relation,  had  quietly  joined  with  his  fellows  in 
strengthening  that  relation  as  it  never  could  have 
been  strengthened  with  the  attention  of  the  public 
upon  it.  And  she  learned  how  the  result  had  been  a 
whole  criminal  confederacy,  with  its  capital  in  the 
poorer  quarters,  bound  together  politically  and  finan- 


260        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

cially,  with  its  officers,  its  agents,  and  its  regularly  re 
tained  lawyers,  at  once  to  defend  and  to  attack. 

Out  of  his  own  observation,  Hermann  told  her  of 
the  saloons  that  were  in  reality  the  clubs  of  these 
procurers.  He  sketched  the  methods  of  procuring 
false  bail-bonds,  of  influencing  magistrates,  juries, 
and  even  judges,  and  of  turning  upon  the  few  con 
scientious  policemen  with  suits  charging  oppression 
and  false  arrest. 

"  O'Malley  und  dese  ozzer  mens  like  him  ofer 
here  make  sometimes  all  of  sixty  dousand  a  year," 
he  declared,  "  und  de  people  lofe  dem  because  dese 
O'Malleys  take  deir  daughters  durin'  twelve  mont's 
und  gif  dem  coal  fur  four." 

"An'  no  one  person  is  to  blame?"  asked  Violet 
in  amazement. 

"  I  vish  dere  vas,  but  dere  ain't." 

"  So  there  ain't  no  way  out  of  it?  " 

"  Von  vay — und  only  von.  For  de  single  time 
badness  makes  poverty,  ninety-nine  times  poverty  it 
makes  badness.  Do  avay  vith  poverty.  Reorganize 
de  whole  of  de  industrial  system;  gif  effery  man  und 
voman  a  chance  to  vork;  gif  effery  man  und  voman 
effery  penny  dey  earns.  So  only  you  do  avay  vith 
poverty,  so  only  you  do  avay  vith  unhappy  und  dis 
contented  homes  und  unhappy  und  discontented  peo 
ple,  und  so  only  you  do  avay  vith  badness." 

He  was  in  the  midst  of  his  subject  when  Katie 
served  the  scanty  supper,  and  he  would  have  had 
neither  time  nor  inclination  for  the  mere  eating  had 
not  his  sweetheart  sternly  ordered  him  to  be  silent. 
But,  as  soon  as  the  meal  was  over  and  the  few  dishes 
washed,  he  continued  his  talk  to  Violet  as,  with  the 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         261 

two  girls  ahead  of  her,  she  leaned  heavily  on  his 
arm  all  the  way  to  Rivington  Street. 

The  concert  was,  it  must  be  confessed,  interesting 
chiefly  to  the  women  that  had  promoted  it,  the  young 
people  that  took  part  in  it,  and  the  relatives  of  the 
performers,  who  succeeded  or  failed  vicariously. 
Stiffly  seated  in  the  cleared  gymnasium,  a  little 
ashamed  and  wholly  ill  at  ease,  the  audience,  drawn 
from  the  neighborhood  and  from  among  the  friends 
of  the  settlement-workers,  bore  it,  however,  with  com 
mendable  fortitude.  They  heard  an  amateur  orches 
tra  play  "  La  Paloma  "  out  of  time;  they  heard  Eva 
Aaronsohn  read  an  essay  on  "  A  Day  in  Central 
Park  " ;  they  heard  a  promising  soprano  solo  spoiled 
by  fright,  and  a  promising  baritone  not  yet  escaped 
from  the  loosening  leash  of  boyhood.  Morris  Bin- 
derwitz  delivered  a  hesitating  oration  upon  Abraham 
Lincoln,  as  culled  from  his  former  debate  regarding 
the  great  emancipator,  and  Luigi  Malatesta,  having 
consulted  the  same  original  sources,  repeated  by  rote 
a  ten-minute  tribute  to  the  military  genius  of  George 
Washington.  There  was  a  duet,  a  piano  solo — a 
simplified  version  of  "  O  Du  Mein  Holder  Abend- 
stern."  Everything  was  conscientiously  applauded, 
nearly  everything  was  encored  and  then,  amid  a 
scraping  of  chairs  and  more  strains  from  the  amateur 
orchestra,  the  ordeal  came  to  an  end. 

As  the  crowd  slowly  dispersed,  Carrie  made  her 
way  to  the  side  of  one  of  the  women-workers  with 
whom  she  had  some  slight  acquaintance  and,  after 
the  formal  catechism  upon  "  how  she  was  doing," 
made  her  plea  for  Violet.  She  told,  of  course,  noth 
ing  of  the  girl's  story,  nor  was  anything  asked.  It 


262         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

was  enough  that  she  should  say  that  her  friend  was 
fresh  from  the  hospital,  was  in  need  of  a  position, 
and,  though  still  weak,  was  able  to  do  light  house 
work. 

The  woman  to  whom  this  appeal  was  made  called 
Marian  Lennox  to  her  side  and,  with  a  brief  ex 
planation  of  what  the  girl  had  just  said,  introduced 
Carrie. 

"  Didn't  you  tell  me,"  she  asked,  "  that  you'd 
heard  to-day  of  somebody  that  needed  an  extra  serv 
ant?" 

Marian  had  heard  of  such  an  opportunity.  The 
word  had  not  come  at  first  hand,  and  the  housewife 
was  personally  unknown  to  her.  She  was  sure,  how 
ever,  that  the  place  was  entirely  estimable,  and  she 
at  once  gladly  gave  the  address,  to  which  her  co- 
laborer  added,  upon  strength  of  Carrie's  assurances, 
a  recommendation. 

Violet  was  brought  over  and  presented,  and  when 
Marian  saw  the  girl's  wan  cheeks  and  dull  eyes,  and 
read  there  the  plain  tokens  of  suffering,  her  own  fine 
face  shone  with  sympathy. 

She  drew  Violet  aside. 

"Have  you  ever  done  housework  before?"  she 
asked. 

"  Only  at  home,  ma'am,"  said  Violet. 

"  Well,  you'll  like  it,  I'm  sure.  I  can't  see  why 
all  you  girls  are  so  foolish  as  to  go  into  factories. 
Housework  is  so  much  more  healthy  and  safe,  and 
it's  just  what  women  are  made  for.  It  pays  so  well, 
too.  Even  if  you  can't  cook,  you  can  scrub  and  clean 
and  help  and  get  three  dollars  or  more  a  week  for 
it,  and  board,  too." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         263 

"  I  think  I'll  like  it,"  Violet  assented,  knowing  in 
her  heart  that  she  would  like  any  work  that  gave  her 
a  living  and  protection. 

"  Then  be  sure  to  come  to  see  me  after  you're 
settled,"  said  Marian. 

She  was  now  wholly  immersed  in  the  work  of  the 
settlement;  but,  though  she  had  undertaken  no  dis 
tracting  outside  investigation,  her  indoor  duties  had 
thus  far  brought  her  into  touch  chiefly  with  children 
of  the  neighborhood,  and  from  them,  wise  beyond 
their  years  as  they  were,  she  had  learned  only  enough 
to  feel  that  she  had  not  yet  come  into  touch  with  the 
great  problems  that  her  young  heart  was  so  eager 
to  answer.  In  this  first  chance  to  give  what  she  con 
ceived  to  be  practical  help,  it  seemed  to  her  that  she 
was  at  last  getting  near  to  the  heart  of  what  she 
sought. 

How  near  she  had  come  to  the  heart  of  another 
problem,  and  how  that  problem  was  involved  in  the 
problem  of  her  own  life,  she  little  guessed  as  she 
smiled  into  Violet's  grateful  face  and,  exacting  an 
other  promise  that  the  girl  should  report  to  her  in 
any.  difficulty,  bade  her  good-night. 


XVIII 

IN  SERVICE 

THE  house  to  which,  next  morning,  Violet,  still 
weak  and  still  afraid  of  her  enemies,  made, 
with  many  timid  inquiries,  her  slow  way  was 
in  West  Ninth  Street,  near  Sixth  Avenue.  It  was 
a  four-story,  grimy,  brick  house,  with  rows  of  prying 
windows  through  which  no  passer's  eye  could  pierce, 
a  dilapidated  little  yard  in  front  of  it,  and  a  bell- 
handle  that,  when  pulled,  threatened  to  come  off  in 
Violet's  fist. 

The  woman  that  answered  this  uncertain  summons 
much  resembled  the  building  she  inhabited.  She 
was  tall,  and  she  had  a  sharp  face  just  the  color  of 
the  house-walls.  The  spectacles  high  on  her  beaked 
nose  gleamed  like  the  windows  and,  like  the  win 
dows,  conveyed  the  impression  that  they  saw  a  great 
deal  without  permitting  any  outsider  to  look  behind 
them.  Her  once  formidably  austere  black  dress  was 
rusty,  and  her  hands  were  so  lean  that  Violet  felt 
sure  they  must  stretch  when  one  shook  them. 

"What  do  you  want?"  asked  this  woman  in  a 
voice  that  cut  like  a  meat-ax. 

"Are  you  Mrs.  Turner?" 

"Yes.     What  do  you  want?" 

"  I  heard  you  needed  a  girl." 

"Where'dyou  hear  it?" 

"At  the  college-settlement  in  Rivington  Street." 

a64 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         265 

The  woman's  mouth  tightened. 

"  Don't  see  how  anyone  there  come  to  know  aught 
o'  me,"  she  said.  "  Got  a  reference?  " 

Violet,  beginning  to  tremble  lest  this  chance  should 
slip  away  from  her,  fumbled  after  the  note  that  had 
been  written  for  her,  and  finally  found  it  and  handed 
it  over. 

Mrs.  Turner's  gleaming  glasses  read  it  twice, 
plainly  suspecting  forgery.  Then  she  calmly  placed 
it  in  her  skirt  pocket. 

"  Where's  your  home?  "  she  next  demanded. 

"  In  Pittsburgh." 

"  Hum.    How  much  do  you  expect?  " 

"  Sixteen  dollars,"  quavered  Violet,  who  had  re 
ceived  instructions  from  Katie. 

Mrs.  Turner  shook  her  head  vigorously. 

"  Won't  do,"  she  said.  "  Can't  pay  it.  Twelve's 
my  best,  and  when  I  have  a  cook — I'm  out  of  one 
just  now — all  you  have  to  do  for  it  is  to  scrub  and 
sweep  and  clean  the  house,  wash  dishes,  and  wait  on 
table.  How  long  did  you  stay  in  your  last  place?  " 

Mrs.  Turner  gave  another  skeptical  "  Hum  "  as 
Violet  answered: 

"  Two  years." 

"  Will  you  take  it  at  twelve  dollars,  or  will  you 
not?  "  asked  the  woman,  sharply. 

Violet  had  been  told  to  descend  gradually  and  not 
to  accept  a  cent  under  fourteen  dollars  a  month; 
but  she  was  no  haggler. 

"  I'll  take  it,"  she  said. 

"  And  good  pay,  too,  considerin',"  commented 
Mrs.  Turner.  "  I  dunno.  It  someways  don't  look 
reg'lar.  Got  your  trunk  over  to  the  settlement?  " 


266         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Violet  explained  that  she  had  no  trunk;  that  she 
had  just  come  from  the  hospital  and  had  as  yet  had 
no  opportunity  to  replenish  what  had  been  a  sadly 
depleted  wardrobe. 

"  Hum!  "  said  Mrs.  Turner. 

In  the  penetrating  glare  of  the  impenetrable  spec 
tacles  she  studied  the  white  face  before  her. 

"  You  wait  a  minute,"  she  concluded.  "  Not  in 
side.  Out  here  on  the  stoop." 

She  came  outside  herself  and  closed  and  locked 
the  door. 

"  I'll  Be  back  soon,"  she  said,  and  Violet  dumbly 
watched  her  lank,  hatless  form  stride  to  Sixth  Ave 
nue  and  turn  the  corner. 

True  to  her  word,  Mrs.  Turner  was  not  long  gone. 

"  I  guess  it's  all  right,"  she  announced,  as  she  re 
opened  the  door  to  the  house.  "  I  'phoned  that 
woman  to  the  settlement.  She  was  out,  but  a  friend 
answered  and  said  the  reference  is  genuwine.  She 
described  you  so's  I'd  be  sure.  Looks  queer  of  me, 
p'r'aps,  but  a  person  can't  be  too  careful  in  this 
town." 

The  gleaming  glasses  seeming  to  search  her  soul 
for  a  reply,  Violet  said  that  she  supposed  a  great 
deal  of  care  was  necessary. 

"  Try  to  get  along  without  it,"  responded  Mrs. 
Turner,  "  and  you'll  mighty  soon  find  out." 

That  ended  preliminaries,  and  Violet,  agreeing  to 
send  for  her  few  belongings,  began  work  without 
further  formality. 

She  discovered  that  Mrs.  Turner  was  a  New  Eng- 
lander,  who  conducted  a  boarding-house  in  a  manner 
that  sensibly  stirred  the  servants'  sympathies  in  favor 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         267 

of  the  patrons.  Just  now  the  season  had  greatly 
decreased  these,  but  the  absence  of  the  cook — it  was 
a  chronic  absence — left  plenty  to  be  done. 

Violet  had  to  rise  with  the  sun  and  attend  to  the 
kitchen  fire.  She  had  to  help  the  mistress  in  the 
preparation  of  every  meal,  and  of  the  serving  of 
every  meal  and  the  washing  of  all  dishes  she  was 
left  in  solitary  authority.  She  made  all  the  beds, 
she  emptied  all  the  slops,  she  swept  the  floors,  beat 
the  rugs,  cleaned  the  windows,  polished  the  stove, 
and  scrubbed  the  steps.  Even  in  the  scant  hours  free 
of  actual  work,  she  must  still  be  within  call  of  the 
door-bell  and  Mrs.  Turner's  voice:  the  service  was 
continuous  from  dawn  until  ten  o'clock  at  night. 

It  would  have  been,  upon  a  frailer  nature,  a  ter 
rible  tax,  but,  fresh  though  she  was  from  the  hos 
pital,  Violet,  her  sturdy  stock  standing  her  in  excel 
lent  stead,  managed  so  to  stagger  through  it  that  her 
wracked  nerves  seemed  actually  to  benefit  by  her 
physical  exhaustion.  Her  lot  had  all  the  horrors 
of  the  average  disregarded  under-servant  and  yet, 
when  she  crept  to  her  stifling  attic  room  at  night — 
a  room  ventilated  by  only  a  dwarfed  skylight — she 
slept  soundly  and  well. 

The  situation  was  one  that  could  not,  however, 
long  continue.  Mrs.  Turner  was  a  pious  woman  and 
as  such  knew  that  there  must  be  what  she  described 
as  "  somethin'  sneakin'  "  about  any  maid  that  could 
bear  her  ill-temper.  Long  experience  of  one  servant 
after  another  leaving  the  house  in  anger,  had  not 
only  innured  the  good  lady  to  such  losses,  but  had 
ended  by  really  creating  a  sort  of  appetite  for  the 
kind  of  condolence  that  she  secured  from  her  neigh- 


268         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

bors  when  without  servile  aid.  It  was  therefore  with 
almost  a  desire  for  the  worst  that  she  endeavored 
to  delve  into  Violet's  past. 

This  course  of  innuendo,  suggestion,  and  cross- 
questioning,  pursued  by  day  and  night,  through  work 
and  rest,  in  strength  and  weariness,  ended  one  after 
noon  when  another  boarder  had  departed,  taking 
three  towels  with  him,  as  is  the  custom  of  depart 
ing  boarders,  and  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Mrs. 
Turner  secretly  felt  that  she  could  no  longer  afford 
a  maid. 

"  Where,"  she  asked,  meeting  Violet  on  the  stairs, 
"  is  them  towels  as  was  in  Mr.  Urner's  room?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Violet. 

"  Well,  they  was  there  this  morning,  before  lunch 
— I  seen  'em  myself — and  now  they  hain't." 

Violet  recalled  that  Mr.  Urner  had  been  to  his 
room  in  the  meantime  and  had  then  left  forever. 

"Hum,"  said  Mrs.  Turner;  "but  you  see  the 
soap's  gone  too." 

For  some  reason  ungiven,  the  landlady  plainly 
thought  that  the  theft  of  the  soap — perhaps  because 
of  Mr.  Urner's  personal  habits — was  proof  posi 
tive  that  Mr.  Urner  could  not  be  the  thief,  and  that 
Violet  must  be.  The  girl  was  not  in  love  with  her 
work,  but  she  was  immensely  comforted  by  the  shel 
ter  it  gave  her,  and  she  now  throbbed  with  terror 
at  the  thought  of  its  loss. 

"  I  didn't  take  it,  Mrs.  Turner,"  she  pleaded, 
"  honest,  I  didn't." 

"  I  didn't  just  say  you  did,"  replied  the  landlady; 
"  but  you  can't  blame  me  if  I  think  things,  the  way 
you  come  here. — Where'd  you  say  your  home  was  ?  " 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         269 

The  question  was  hurled  so  suddenly,  and  was  ac 
companied  by  such  an  uncommonly  strong  glare  from 
the  penetrating  spectacles,  that  Violet's  slow  brain 
tottered.  For  the  life  of  her,  she  could  not  think 
of  the  city  that  she  had  formerly  mentioned. 

"  Well  "  —Mrs.  Turner's  foot  beat  sharply  on  the 
floor — "  that  ain't  a  hard  question,  is  it?  Where'd 
you  say  you  come  from?" 

In  desperation,  the  girl  named  the  first  city  that 
her  lips  recalled. 

"  Philadelphia,"  she  murmured,  and  realized  at 
once  that  this  was  wrong  and  that  her  tormentor 
knew  it. 

"  You  said  Pittsburgh  last  week,  miss,"  clicked 
Mrs.  Turner.  She  raised  a  knotty  finger.  "  Now 
I  ain't  sayin'  you  took  that  soap  nor  yet  them  towels 
— mind  you  that — but  I  am  sayin'  you  lied.  Me  and 
liars  ain't  good  company:  you'd  better  go." 

The  tears  came  to  Violet's  eyes.  They  overflowed 
and  she  broke  down.  In  three  short  sentences  she 
had  confessed  enough  for  Mrs.  Turner  to  guess  the 
entire  truth,  and  had  cast  herself  upon  the  woman's 
mercy. 

But  Mrs.  Alberta  Turner's  straight  bosom  was  no 
pillow  for  the  unfortunate.  Rugged  as  it  was,  it 
was  no  rock  of  safety.  She  drew  her  black  figure 
to  its  greatest  height;  she  called  upon  all  her  re 
ligious  experience  for  backing,  and  upon  all  her 
study  of  the  Bible  for  phraseology,  and  she  launched 
at  the  girl  a  sermon  the  burden  of  which  was  that, 
as  she  would  have  been  glad  to  receive  into  her  care 
a  woman  that  had  erred  and  had  repented,  so  she 
was  in  Christian  duty  bound  to  cast  forth  and 


270        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

utterly  repudiate  one  that  had  shown  herself  far 
from  repentance  by  seeking  employment  without  first 
baring  her  inmost  soul. 

Violet,  in  a  word,  was  put  upon  the  street.  She 
was  told  that  she  could  have  her  few  possessions 
when  she  called  for  them,  but  she  was  given  neither 
the  Rivington  Street  recommendation  nor  a  new 
one. 

She  had  received  no  leisure  to  see  her  friends  of 
the  tenement  or  the  settlement  during  the  days  of 
her  service,  and  she  could  not  bring  herself  to  seek 
them  now  that  the  black  bird  had  again  perched  upon 
her  forlorn  banner.  For  half  an  hour  she  wandered 
aimlessly  through  the  quieter  streets;  for  another 
half-hour  she  endeavored  to  gather  her  courage.  It 
was  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  before,  desperate, 
she  had  inquired  of  a  policeman  for  the  whereabouts 
of  an  employment-agency,  had  found  the  grimy 
place,  passed  through  the  gloomy  room  with  lines 
of  toil-worn  slatterns  seated  along  its  walls,  and 
stated,  in  hesitant  accents,  her  mission  to  the  fat 
and  frowzy  woman  in  charge  at  a  littered  desk  in 
the  room  beyond. 

That  woman — she  had  a  steady,  calculating  eye — 
looked  at  her  victim  with  a  curious  appraisement. 

"  What  experience?  "  she  asked. 

"  Very  little,"  admitted  Violet. 

"  Well  are  you The  woman's  voice  dropped 

to  the  tone  of  discretion. — "  Are  you  particular?  " 

"  Why  no,"  said  Violet  sadly,  "  I  ain't  particular, 
so  as  it's  quiet." 

The  mistress  smiled  sagely. 

"  We  can  fix  that  all  right,"  said  she. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         271 

But  she  said  it  so  knowingly  that  Violet  found 
herself  hurriedly  adding: 

"  An'  so  long  as  it's  decent" 

That  it  was  well  she  had  supplemented  her  pre 
ceding  speech,  she  at  once  perceived  by  the  change 
that  came  over  the  woman's  face. 

"  Oh !  "  said  the  woman  in  a  tone  at  once  un 
interested.  "Well,  have  you  any  reference?" 

"No.    You  see " 

"  Never  mind  why.  If  we  get  you  a  job,  some 
of  the  girls  have  plenty,  an'  we  can  lend  you  one 
of  theirs.  Go  out  an'  sit  down  an'  we'll  see  what 
happens." 

Violet  returned  to  the  dark  front  room  and  took 
a  shrinking  seat  in  a  corner  among  the  other  appli 
cants:  two  lines  of  pasty-faced,  ungainly,  and  not 
over-cleanly  women. 

She  picked  up  a  tattered  paper,  dated  the  preceding 
day,  and  tried  to  read  it.  She  saw  that  the  primary 
election  had  been  held  and  that  Wesley  Dyker  had 
secured  one  of  the  nominations  for  magistrate;  but 
she  was  tired  and  disgusted  and  pursued  the  print 
no  farther,  listening,  instead,  to  the  babble  of  gossip 
that  was  going  on  about  her. 

Had  she  ever  heard  that  New  York  was  remark 
able  for  having  a  model  employment-agency  law,  she 
would  there  have  learned  how  lightly  that  law  is 
enforced  and  how  much  the  employment-agencies  of 
Manhattan  resemble  those  of  every  other  large  city. 
The  foul  beds  in  which  these  women  slept  three 
at  a  time,  and  for  the  use  of  which  the  agencies 
frequently  charged  a  dollar  and  a  half  a  night;  the 
exorbitant  two  and  three  dollars  exacted  as  a  fee 


272         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

for  every  position  secured;  the  encouragement  given 
servants  to  make  frequent  changes  and  increase  their 
fees;  and  the  hard  plight  of  maids  dismissed  from 
service,  whose  only  friends,  being  servants  them 
selves,  had  no  shelter  to  offer — all  these  things  were 
the  ordinary  part  and  parcel  of  their  talk. 

The  women  chattered  of  their  old  employers  and 
bandied  household  secrets  from  loose  lip  to  lip. 
Family  skeletons  were  hauled  forth  for  merrymak 
ing,  and  testimony  enough  to  crowd  a  divorce-court 
was  given  against  not  a  few  respectable  citizens. 

All  complained  of  ill-housing  and  loneliness.  Bad 
enough  at  any  time,  the  advance  of  the  race  of  flat- 
dwellers  and  the  decrease  of  householders  had  in 
tensified  all  the  evils  that  domestic  servants  have  to 
endure.  The  best  servants'  rooms  in  the  ordinary 
houses  were,  it  appeared,  unheated;  the  worst  were 
windowless  closets  in  a  kitchen  or  alcoves  in  a  cellar. 
None  of  these  workers  had  been  given  a  room  in 
which  they  could  fittingly  receive  their  friends,  and, 
as  many  of  them  were  forbidden  to  have  callers  in 
the  kitchen,  they  lived  what  social  life  was  possible 
on  afternoons  or  evenings  "  off,"  on  the  streets,  in 
the  parks,  or  aboard  those  floating  bar-rooms  that 
are  called  excursion-boats.  Violet  remembered  Frit- 
zie;  she  remembered  the  heavy  percentage  of  serv 
ants  that,  according  to  Hermann,  ended  in  slavery 
• — and  she  began  to  understand. 

At  five  o'clock  there  entered  the  room  a  pleasant- 
faced,  stout  woman,  uncommonly  homely,  who  was 
obviously  a  prospective  employer.  She  looked  about 
her  in  embarrassment,  and  seemed  uncertain  where 
to  go. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         273 

Violet,  beside  whom  the  stranger  was  standing, 
rose. 

"Are  you  lookin'  for  the  office?"  she  asked. 
"  I'll  show  you  the  way." 

The  woman  seemed  to  like  her  thoughtfulness  and 
seemed,  after  a  quick  glance,  to  like  her  appearance 
even  more. 

x  "  I  am  not  particular  about  the  office,"  said  the 
newcomer;  "what  I  want  is  a  servant.  Come  out 
side  a  minute  and  talk  to  me." 

Violet  followed  her  into  the  street,  wondering. 

As  they  reached  the  pavement,  the  woman  smiled : 
her  smile  was  so  pleasant  that  she  almost  ceased  to 
be  homely. 

"  I  am  a  practical  person,"  she  said,  "  and  as  I 
also  loathe  and  detest  these  agencies,  I  always,  if 
possible,  engage  a  girl  so  that  she  won't  have  to 
pay  them  their  commissions. — Can  you  do  general 
housework?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  You  don't  look  very  strong." 

The  girl's  heart  throbbed.  Mrs.  Turner  had  said 
that  dismissal  was  the  result  not  of  what  had  been 
done  but  of  the  thing's  concealment. 

"  That's  only  because  I  was  ill  awhile  ago,"  be 
gan  Violet.  "  I  had  been  in  trouble 

"But  you're  quite  well  now?"  the  woman  inter 
rupted. 

"  Quite,"  answered  Violet. 

She  did  not  know  how  now  to  proceed;  but  the 
stranger,  still  smiling,  soon  gave  her  a  chance. 

"  Any  reference?  " 

"  No,  ma'am,  I  haven't  no  reference." 


274        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  How  does  that  come?  " 

"  I  was  fired  from  my  last  place."  She  took  a 
breath,  then  a  greater  one,  and  concluded:  "I  was 
fired  because  the  woman  I  worked  for  found  out 
that  I  had  been  in  trouble." 

The  stranger  promptly  ceased  to  smile. 

"What  sort  of  trouble?"  she  inquired. 

Violet  saw  that  she  had  made  a  fatal  error,  but 
she  did  not  know  how  to  end  it  except  by  proceeding. 

"  You  know,"  she  stammered,  "  there  was  a 
man " 

The  stranger  raised  a  plump,  gloved  hand. 

11  Don't  tell  me  that,"  she  said.  "  I  have  no  right 
to  the  details.  I  think  I  understand  your  motive, 
and  it's  creditable,  I  must  say.  But,  my  dear,  I 
am  by  no  means  a  beautiful  woman  and  I  have  a 
very  susceptible  husband — very.  I'm  afraid  I  must 
be  going  along." 

And  along  she  went,  leaving  Violet  in  a  tossing 
sea  of  emotion.  Mrs.  Turner  had  lied,  which  meant 
the  girl  must  lie;  this  later  employer  had  said  that 
the  woman  who  had  been  enticed  was  generally  sup 
posed  anxious  to  entice  others,  a  theory  that  also 
meant  that  Violet  must  lie.  She  returned  to  the 
agency,  convinced  that  her  error  had  lain  only  in 
a  lack  of  skill  at  deception. 

No  other  customers  appeared  during  the  rest  of 
the  afternoon,  and  when  the  agency  closed  its  doors 
for  the  night  Violet,  too  alarmed  by  the  stories  she 
had  heard  to  trust  herself  to  one  of  its  beds,  sought 
the  nearest  policeman — she  was  losing  her  fear  of 
policemen  at  last — and  had  him  direct  her  to  a  cheap 
but  respectable  hotel.  She  had  a  little  money  and 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         275 

she  paid  gladly  for  a  room  that  was  nearly  comfort 
able;  but  she  could  not  sleep,  and  she  returned  to 
the  employment-office  early  in  the  morning  with  red 
eyes  and  swollen  cheeks. 

Until  long  after  noon  she  sat  there,  waiting.  She 
watched  everyone  that  entered;  she  looked  at  first 
eagerly  and  at  last  appealingly  at  every  possible  em 
ployer;  but  somehow  the  woman  in  the  inner  room 
never  sent  for  her. 

At  last  Violet  herself  walked  through  the  rear 
door. 

The  frowzy  person  with  the  calculating  eyes  looked 
at  her  sharply. 

"  You  back?  "  she  asked. 

"  I  haven't  left,"  said  Violet. 

"  Why,  I  heard  you  tried  to  steal  a  customer  yes 
terday  afternoon." 

"That  wasn't  no  customer;  it  was  a  friend  of 
mine." 

"  Oh !    Well,  what  do  you  want  now?  " 

"A  job." 

"I  know  that.    What  else?" 

"  I  want  to  give  you  this:  I  have  six  dollars,  an' 
I'll  give  you  five  down  if  you  can  get  me  a  decent 
job  in  a  decent  house  this  afternoon,  an'  then  I'll  give 
you  two  dollars  a  week  out  of  my  first  three  weeks' 
pay." 

The  frowzy  person  screwed  her  lips  in  a  down 
ward  curve  that  was  probably  intended  for  a  smile. 

"  I've  had  that  percentage  game  handed  out  to 
me  about  a  thousand  times  before,"  she  remarked, 
"  an'  I  believe  in  such  money  when  I  get  it.  Still, 
I  don't  mind  seein'  that  five." 


276         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Violet  produced  it,  and  saw  it  swiftly  vanish  down 
a  black  cotton  stocking. 

"All  right.  Tell  you  what  I'll  do.  Here's  a 
woman  down  on  Washington  Square  wants  a  maid 
to  wait  on  table.  Can  you  do  it?  " 

"  I  can  try;  but  of  course  I've  never  done  it 
before." 

"  I'll  rent  you  a  couple  of  references  in  the  name 
of  Bella  Nimick — that'll  cost  you  two  dollars  more, 
an'  I  guess  I'll  have  to  trust  you  for  it — an'  the  cook 
down  there — she  deals  with  us — she'll  give  you  some 
pointers  on  the  job.  You'll  find  it  a  good  place. 
They're  old  swells,  an'  the  name's  Chamberlin." 

Violet  lost  no  time  in  seeking  this  new  address. 
She  found  it  to  be  a  large  brick  house,  with  white 
marble  steps,  facing  the  leafy  square  from  the  north, 
and  looking  across  the  broad  green  lawn  toward  a 
church  that  towered  into  the  blue  skies  by  day  and 
by  night  reached  up  toward  Heaven  with  a  fiery 
cross.  The  cook,  to  whom,  through  the  areaway,  she 
made  her  application,  proved  to  be  an  ample  Swedish 
woman,  with  a  heart  fashioned  in  true  proportion  to 
her  body,  and  a  round,  placid  face  that  spoke  well 
for  her  mistress. 

That  mistress,  Violet  was  without  delay  informed, 
was  an  invalid,  whose  ills,  if  mostly  fanciful,  were 
at  least  fancied  with  a  force  sufficient  to  keep  her 
in  town  and  in  the  house  all  summer  long.  Her 
husband — she  had  remarried  after  a  divorce — passed 
the  warm  months  visiting  more  wealthy  friends  along 
the  rocky  Maine  coast,  and  her  son  ran  in  to  see  her 
between  such  invitations  to  Newport  and  Narragan- 
sett  as  he  could  secure.  A  daughter  by  the  second 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         277 

union,  a  girl  of  sixteen,  remained  to  care  for  her 
mother,  and  this  child  and  a  professional  nurse, 
whose  long  service  made  her  almost  a  member  of 
the  family,  completed  the  household. 

Violet  was  presented  to  Mrs.  Chamberlin,  a  frail 
woman  with  a  white,  delicate  face,  lying  on  a  couch 
in  a  darkened  library,  and,  her  references  being 
casually  read,  was  promptly  engaged.  She  was  to 
receive  eighteen  dollars  a  month  for  far  lighter  work 
than  had  been  her  portion  under  the  sway  of  Mrs. 
Turner,  and,  as  Bella  Nimick,  began  at  once  to  see 
that  a  better  time  was  before  her. 

Objections  there  of  course  were,  but  these  were 
not  of  a  sort  that  either  Violet's  previous  experience 
or  present  necessity  permitted  her  to  observe. 
Brought  up  i'n  wealth,  Mrs.  Chamberlin's  ideals  had 
not  been  improved  by  that  decline  of  fortune  con 
sequent  upon  her  marriage.  Neither  in  a  practical 
nor  in  an  executive  sense  had  she  received  any  train 
ing,  and,  though  she  would  have  told  you  that  house 
hold  management  was  woman's  true  sphere,  she 
actually  knew  as  little  of  it  as  she  did  of  the  whole 
sale  drug  trade.  It  had  never  occurred  to  her  that 
cooking  was  even  distantly  related  to  chemistry  and 
dietetics;  scrubbing,  dusting,  and  sweeping  to  hy 
giene,  or  domestic  administration  to  bookkeeping. 
By  the  same  token,  the  two  servants  had  to  share 
a  dark,  narrow  room  in  the  basement,  had  no  sitting- 
room  save  the  kitchen  and,  so  far  as  social  life  went, 
would  have  been,  had  they  depended  upon  the  Cham 
berlin  house,  twin  Selkirks  on  a  Juan  Fernandez. 

But  Violet  was  happy.  Her  health,  if  it  did  not 
improve,  at  least  did  not  noticeably  decline.  The 


278         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

work,  if  it  was  hard,  was  at  least  possible  of  accom 
plishment.  And  within  a  week  she  had  made  her 
self  so  valuable  to  both  her  mistress  and  her  mis 
tress's  nurse  that  these  potentates  found  continuous 
need  of  her. 

Then  the  first  blow  fell. 

She  had  just  put  away  the  last  of  the  dishes  from 
an  early  dinner  and  was  passing  the  barred  front 
window  of  the  basement  when,  from  the  sunset 
across  the  square,  a  shadow  descended  to  the  floor 
within.  She  looked  up,  startled.  In  the  areaway 
a  dapper,  dark,  flashily  dressed  young  man  was 
standing,  and  the  young  man  was  Angel. 

Violet  darted  away  from  the  window,  but  Angel, 
reaching  through  the  bars,  calmly  raised  the  sash, 
which,  even  in  the  warmest  weather,  was  drawn 
against  the  noise  and  dust  of  the  street.  His  dark 
face  was  flushed,  and  though  his  wet,  red  lips  were 
smiling,  they  smiled  evilly. 

"  No  treecks,"  he  commanded.  "  You  come  to 
me.  I  wanta  talk." 

Violet  did  not  answer.  She  huddled  into  the 
farthest  corner. 

"Stan'  out!"  continued  Angel,  his  lips  still 
curved.  "  You  theenka  me  so  dumb  ?  I  am  sharpa 
'nough  for  see  you.  You  come  here,  or  I  go  ope 
stairs  an'  reenga  da  bell." 

Slowly,  like  the  bird  advancing  to  the  swaying 
serpent,  she  obeyed  him. 

"  Now,"  he  said,  when  they  were  face  to  face, 
"  you  alone?  " 

She  thanked  Heaven  that  they  were.  The  cook 
was  in  the  kitchen. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         279 

"  Foot  on  you'  hat  an'  come  alonga  with  me." 

"  I  won't !  "  said  Violet. 

"Youdoeet!" 

"  I  can't.  The  missus  won't  let  me.  It  ain't  my 
night  off." 

"  Eef  you  don't,  I  go  ope  stairs  an'  tell  all  abouta 
you." 

"  I  don't  care.     I  won't  go !  " 

"Queeck!" 

"  No." 

"  Then  da  wroman  she  fire  you,  an'  I  get  you  when 
you  come  out  alone." 

Violet  knew  that  he  meant  it. 

"Where  do  you  want  to  take  me?"  she  asked. 
"  I  won't  let  you  never  take  me  back  to  Rose's." 

"  No  fear,"  laughed  Angel,  shaking  his  oily  curls. 
"  Meess  Rosie  she  would  not  stan'  to  have  you  near." 

"  Then  what  do  you  want?  " 

"  I  want  you  come  to  "District  Attorney's,  da  place 
you  go  witha  that  fine  gentleman  Dyker.  You  won'ta 
be  hurt.  You  can  peeck  out  any  cop  on  da  way  to 
go  along,  an'  you  weell  knowa  da  place." 

"  Does  he  want  me — that  lawyer  I  talked  to  there 
before?" 

"  I  been  to  see  him  an'  tell  him  we  come." 

"  Then  what  am  I  to  do  when  I  get  there?  " 

"  Taka  back  all  you  say  for  thata  Dyke'.  Da's 
all:  no  more — only  so  mooch.  I  won't  bother  you  no 
more ;  thata  lawyer  won't  bother  you  no  more ;  Dyker 
won't  bother  you  no  more.  You  do  that,  or  losa  da 
job.  Wheech?" 

Violet  put  her  hand  before  her  eyes.  She  knew 
as  well  as  a  wiser  woman  what  had  happened.  An- 


280        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

gel  had  traced  her  to  Katie's,  to  the  hospital,  to  the 
settlement,  to  the  employment-agency — he  was  doubt 
less  familiar  with  such  places — to  this  house.  Rose's 
latest  captive  had  been  turned  out  on  the  streets 
before  the  raid  and  lost  to  sight.  The  entire  white- 
slavery  charge  now  rested  on  Violet's  testimony,  and 
Angel's  purpose  was  to  have  her  withdraw  the  affi 
davit  she  had  made.  In  her  present  condition,  she 
could  not,  she  thought,  be  of  any  further  use  to  him ; 
that  purpose  served,  he  would  be  only  too  glad  to 
let  her  again  hide  herself,  and,  hidden  here,  with 
Dyker  elected  and  engaged  by  newer  cares,  she  might 
escape  both  friends  and  foes.  Terror  drove  out  all 
desire  for  revenge  upon  Rose  Legere;  it  drove  out 
even  the  power  to  keep  her  promise  to  Dyker.  All 
that  she  wanted  was  her  job. 

"  All  right,"  she  said.  "  Wait  till  I  go  upstairs 
and  get  permission." 

"  No  treecks,"  cautioned  Angel.  "  Eef  you  try 
treecks,  I  go  upstair'  myself." 

She  promised,  and  left  him,  presenting  to  Mrs. 
Chamberlin  in  the  library,  a  moment  later,  a  face 
that  bore  out  her  story  of  the  illness  of  a  friend. 

"  Well,"  said  the  invalid,  "  if  you  go  out  I  shall 
be  certain  to  need  you;  but  I  suppose  there  is  no 
help  for  it.  Don't  be  gone  more  than  an  hour." 

Violet  joined  Angel  in  the  area,  and  went  with  him, 
but,  though  she  was  disposed  toward  silence,  she  was 
surprised  to  find  the  Italian  in  a  pleasant,  even  a 
genial,  mood. 

In  his  moment  of  success,  he  was  well-nigh  mag 
nanimous.  He  bore  not  a  trace  of  malice,  seeming 
to  regard  the  whole  matter  as  a  game  in  which  all 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         281 

the  moves  on  both  sides  had  been  in  accord  with 
the  rules.  He  chattered  a  variety  of  gossip  about 
everything  and  every  person  save  those  who  were 
most  intimately  concerned  in  his  present  action,  and 
only  as  they  neared  the  office,  where  a  light  showed 
that  the  young  assistant  had  remained  in  accordance 
with  the  word  that  Angel  had  previously  brought 
him,  did  he  touch  upon  the  matter  in  hand. 

"  No  treecks,  now,"  he  cautioned.  "  All  you  gotta 
do  ees  tella  heem  you  were  Rosie's  frien'  an'  she 
hit  you,  so  you  gotta  drunk  an'  wanted  to  maka 
trouble." 

"  Won't  he  be  cross?  "  asked  Violet,  her  agitation 
returning  anew. 

"  Naw,"  Angel  reassured  her.  "  He's  used  to 
sucha  t'ings.  Don'  forgot,  an'  I  give  you  five  doll'." 

They  entered  the  office  that  Violet  just  recalled 
as  having  visited  with  Dyker  in  her  fever-dream. 
At  a  desk,  covered  with  neatly  arranged  piles  of 
papers  sat  the  young  assistant,  who,  having  then 
seen  her  red  with  illness,  and  now  seeing  her  still 
white  from  its  recovery,  might  well  suppose  that 
their  first  meeting  was  the  result  of  drunken  malice. 

"  Here  she  ees,"  smiled  Angel,  "  like  I  promise. 
She  ees  a  gooda  girl  now,  an'  sorry  she  tell  you  da 
deeferent  story  an'  maka  trouble." 

Angelelli  had  told  Violet  the  truth:  the  young  man 
was  indeed  used  to  such  things — so  used  to  them  that 
he  knew  protest  was  fruitless  and  that  his  inquiry 
must  be  formal. 

'You  want  to  withdraw  your  deposition?"  he 
asked.  He  was  a  kindly  young  man  with  a  thin 
face. 


282         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"Do  I  what?"  asked  Violet. 

"  He  means "  began  Angel. 

"  I  mean,"  interrupted  the  lawyer,  "  do  you  want 
to  take  back  the  story  you  told  me  about  Rose  Le- 
gere?  This  case  is  on  the  calendar  for  to-morrow, 
so  if  you  mean  to  take  back  what  you  said,  you  had 
better  do  it  now." 

"  It  won't  get  me  into  no  trouble?  " 

The  young  man  raised  his  eyebrows. 

"What  would  be  the  use?"  he  inquired.  "No, 
it  won't  get  you  into  any  trouble." 

"  Then  I'll  take  it  back,"  said  Violet. 

"  You'll  have  to  be  sworn,  you  know." 

"  She  don'  minda  that,"  said  Angel.  "  Do  you, 
Violet?" 

The  girl  shook  her  head,  and  a  clerk  was  called 
and  administered  an  oath  so  rapidly  that  Violet  could 
understand  no  word  of  it. 

"  You're  doing  this  of  your  own  free  will — just 
because  you  want  to?  "  resumed  the  lawyer,  donning 
his  professional  air,  and  seeming  to  become  infected 
with  the  clerk's  rapidity  of  utterance.  "  You  are 
not  swayed  by  any  promise  of  pecuniary  reward — 
that  is  because  you're  paid  for  it?  And  there  has 
been  no  force  or  threat  used  to  compel  you  to  do 
it — I  mean  you  haven't  been  told  you'd  be  hurt  if 
you  backed  down?" 

Violet  bowed  in  token  of  a  desire  to  answer  these 
questions  in  whatever  way  was  necessary  to  her  bar 
gain,  and  the  new  deposition  proceeded  in  the  same 
manner  and  along  the  lines  that  Angel  had  laid 
down.  The  clerk  hurried  because  he  wanted  to  get 
home;  the  lawyer  hurried  because  he  thoroughly  dis- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         283 

believed  every  word  that  was  written;  and,  severe 
as  Violet  had  feared  that  the  ordeal  would  be,  it 
was  over  far  sooner  than  she  had  expected. 

Angel,  still  loyal  to  his  word,  saw  her  safely  home. 

"  Now,"  he  said,  as  he  left  her  at  the  areaway, 
"  nobody  weell  ever  any  more  bother  you.  Good 
night." 

He  raised  his  hat  and  went  away,  but,  as  he 
turned,  he  pressed  into  her  cold  hand  a  crisp,  new 
bill. 

Violet's  fingers  closed  about  it  silently.  She  had 
earned  it. 


XIX 

"FIAT  JUSTITIA  RUAT  CAELUM" 

THE  trial  of  Rose  Legere  was  precisely  the 
farce  that  Violet  had  expected  and  that  An 
gel  had  planned.  In  ninety  of  such  cases  out 
of  every  hundred,  the  chief  witnesses  for  the  state 
are  suppressed  by  fear  or  force,  and  the  prosecution 
collapses.  Thus,  in  the  present  instance,  had  not 
the  newspapers  made  first-page  announcements  of 
the  Legere  woman's  arrest  and  so  attracted  to  the 
case  the  momentary  attention  of  an  effervescing 
moral  public,  the  District  Attorney's  office  would, 
in  fact,  have  contented  itself  with  submitting  the  in 
dictment  and  asking  for  a  verdict  of  not  guilty. 

With  Violet  in  the  hospital  during  the  session  of 
the  Grand  Jury,  Wesley,  now  a  man  of  power,  had 
been  able  to  refresh  Larry  Riley's  memory  to  such 
a  point  that,  in  the  hands  of  the  prosecutor,  the 
policeman's  evidence  was  sufficient  to  insure  the  find 
ing  of  a  true  bill;  but  when  the  case  was  called  for 
trial  the  situation  was  vastly  changed.  The  girl  that 
had  followed  Violet  into  the  net  had  been  cast  back 
into  the  sea  of  the  city  and  utterly  swallowed  up. 
Violet  herself  had  recanted.  The  elder  inmates  of 
the  Legere  establishment  regarded  the  law  as  their 
natural  enemy  and,  had  they  been  disposed  to  assist 
it,  could  in  no  wise  have  been  regarded  as  credible 
witnesses.  The  action  had,  therefore,  to  rest  en- 

28A 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         285 

tirely  upon  Riley's  testimony,  and  for  Riley's  testi 
mony  there  was  virtually  no  corroboration  procur 
able. 

"  You're  a  good  thing — I  don't  think,"  remarked 
the  weary-faced  young  Assistant  District  Attorney 
as,  on  the  morning  of  the  trial,  he  met  Dyker  in 
the  corridor  of  the  court.  "  We  shoved  this  case 
about  five  years  ahead  on  the  calendar  to  please  you, 
and  the  night  before  it's  called  your  witness  comes 
to  my  office  and  eats  her  deposition." 

Wesley  had  already  heard  that  piece  of  news. 
When,  in  order  to  keep  an  eye  upon  Violet,  he  had, 
some  time  previously,  sought  her  at  Katie's  tene 
ment,  and  had  received  a  series  of  uncredited  vows 
to  the  effect  that  the  Irish  girl  had  no  idea  of  the 
whereabouts  of  her  late  charge,  he  had  begun  to 
look  for  a  recantation.  It  was  the  sort  of  game  that 
he  had  himself  frequently  played,  and  he  blamed  his 
own  lack  of  foresight  in  not  better  providing  against 
it.  Then  other  interests  had  arisen.  The  campaign 
came  on  apace;  there  were  newer  enemies  than  Rose 
to  be  dealt  with,  and,  when  the  wires  leading  from 
the  District  Attorney's  office  had  informed  him  that 
the  expected  had  occurred,  he  received  the  word  with 
calm  philosophy. 

"  Well,"  he  carelessly  laughed  in  reply  to  the 
young  assistant's  sally,  "that's  always  the  way:  we 
elect  you  people  into  your  jobs  and  then  you  think 
that  we  ought  to  get  up  ycur  cases  for  you  and  hold 
your  witnesses." 

He  went  on  his  way,  unconcerned.  Scarcely  less 
concerned,  the  young  assistant,  knowing  that  his 
cause  was  lost,  proceeded  into  court  with  a  solemn 


286         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

air  calculated  to  convince  an  outraged  public  moral 
ity  of  his  high  intent;  challenged  juror  after  juror 
with  a  frowning  brow;  outlined  his  case  with  biting 
logic;  examined  Riley,  as  the  officer  on  the  beat,  to 
gether  with  the  other  policemen  that  had  made  the 
arrest,  in  an  heroic  style  eminently  pleasing  to  the 
reporters;  finally  worked  himself  into  a  profuse 
perspiration  of  Ciceronian  invective  against  the  pris 
oner  and,  mopping  his  weary  face,  sat  down. 

Equally  without  concern,  and  knowing  his  cause 
was  won,  counsel  for  the  defense,  a  suave  little  per 
sonage,  played  his  role  as  the  cues  came  to  him:  re 
tained  his  suavity  through  an  opening  statement  flatly 
denying  that  of  his  learned  young  friend;  pretended 
to  drop  a  little  of  the  suavity  through  a  series  of 
cutting  cross-examinations  that  left  nothing  of  the 
policeman's  vague  testimony;  and  gave  an  excellent 
imitation  of  throwing  away  all  the  rest  of  the  suavity 
when,  in  an  impassioned  speech,  quite  up  to  that  of 
his  learned  young  friend,  he  declared  that  he  would 
call  no  witness  (which  he  did  not  dare  to  do),  be 
cause  the  Commonwealth  had  wholly  failed  to  make 
out  its  case  (which  was  quite  true),  and  because  a 
respectable  lady,  the  daughter  of  a  mother,  had  been 
outraged  by  ruffianly  officers,  her  humble  home  ruth 
lessly  wrecked,  and  her  livelihood  endangered 
(which  was  absolutely  false). 

So,  at  last,  without  any  pretense  at  concern  what 
ever,  the  bottle-nosed  personage  on  the  bench  ceased 
drawing  pigs  on  his  blotter,  and,  sharing  the  com 
mon  knowledge  of  the  fate  of  the  case,  gravely  in 
structed  the  unwashed  jury  that  if  they  thought  two 
and  two  were  four  they  should  so  find,  whereas  if, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         287 

on  the  other  hand,  they  believed  four  to  be  the  sum 
of  one  and  one  plus  one  and  one  they  were  to  per 
form  their  sworn  duty  and  so  report.  And  the  unj 
washed  jury,  without  leaving  the  court-room,  de 
clared  Rose  Legere  an  innocent  woman. 

The  innocent  woman,  still  the  pleasantly  stout  lady 
of  the  brewery  advertisement,  shook  gratefully  the 
soft  paw  of  her  forensic  defender. 

"  Thank  God  that's  over,"  said  she,  with  quite  as 
much  feeling  and  quite  as  much  reason  as  many 
others  of  us  return  praise  to  Heaven  for  benefits  that 
originate  a  good  deal  nearer  earth. 

The  suave  defender  smiled. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  thank  God — and  pay  me" 

"  You'll  get  a  check  in  the  morning,"  Rose  re 
plied,  "  an'  I  haven't  a  grudge  against  nobody, 
though  I  do  think  that  other  lawyer  might  'a'  got 
less  gay  with  his  tongue." 

"  He  was  only  doing  his  duty,  Mrs.  Legere.  It's 
the  law,  you  know." 

"  What  if  it  is?  I  didn't  make  it.  What  I  don't 
like  to  see  is  the  way  you  people'll  go  back  on  your 
friends  because  somethin'  or  other's  the  law." 

She  gathered  her  silk  skirts  free  of  contamination 
by  the  low  crowd  in  the  court-room,  and  made  her 
way  to  a  waiting  taxicab  outside. 

"  I  think,"  she  said,  as  that  vehicle  began  to  pump 
through  the  streets,  "  I'll  pay  a  little  call  on  Mr. 
Wesley  Dyker." 

She  found  him,  somewhat  surprised  beneath  his 
drooping  lids,  at  his  office,  and  he  immediately 
agreed  to  see  her  alone. 

"  Now  then,"  she  said  pleasantly,  seating  herself 


288         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

unasked  before  his  desk  and  leaning  easily  back  in 
her  chair,  "  what  I  want  to  know  is :  Am  I  goin'  to 
be  let  alone?  " 

Dyker  stroked  his  crisp  mustache.  He  wanted  to 
gain  time. 

"  You  were  acquitted,  then?  "  he  asked. 

"  Looks  like  it,  don't  it?  See  here,  Wes,  I  know 
where  all  my  trouble  come  from,  an'  I  can  pretty 
well  guess  how  it  come;  but  I'm  willin'  to  ferget  it 
if  you  are.  Are  you?  " 

Dyker's  slow  eyes  were  raised  to  hers,  then  low 
ered. 

"  Yes,"  he  said. 

"All  right.  Now  you'll  need  me  an'  I'll  lend 
a  hand,  but  I've  got  to  know  first  off  if  I'm  not  goin' 
to  be  interfered  with." 

"  You  had  better  see  O'Malley  about  that." 

"  No,  I  hadn't.  You  went  to  see  him  first;  go  to 
him  again." 

"  I "  Dyker  twirled  a  pencil  between  his  white 

fingers.  "  I  shan't  be  sorry  if  I  do?  " 

"  You  will  not." 

"  I  may  count  on  that,  may  I?  " 

Rose  squared  herself  in  her  chair. 

"  Got  a  talkin'-machine  around  here  ?  "  she  in 
quired. 

"  Why,  no." 

"  Because  I'd  like  to  have  some  soft  music  while 
I  tell  you  the  story  of  my  life — see?  " 

"  I  don't  believe  you  have  to  tell  that." 

"  Yes,  I  do.  I  want  you  to  know  just  what  I  am; 
then  you'll  see  whether  you  can  depend  on  me.  I 
was  brought  up  decent — that's  the  truth.  I  had  my 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         289 

church  an'  Sunday-school  like  you  had,  an'  perhaps 
more.  The  other  sort  of  school  I  had  to  quit  early, 
because  my  old  man  wasn't  paid  enough  to  keep 
me  on,  an'  I  had  to  go  to  work  myself.  I  was  under 
the  age;  but  I  swore  I  wasn't,  so  that  was  all  right, 
an'  after  I'd  tramped  over  the  whole  town,  I  got 
a  job  filin'  letters  an'  addressin'  circulars  in  a  young 
broker's  office.  I  was  mighty  little,  but  I  was  mighty 
good  lookin'.  I  thought  he  took  me  for  what  I 
could  do,  but  I  found  out  he  took  me  for  my 
looks." 

She  spoke  quite  without  emotion,  and  Dyker,  in 
spite  of  himself,  was  interested. 

"  It  cost  that  broker  a  lot  to  live,"  she  continued; 
"  so  much  that  he  couldn't  afford  to  get  married. 
When  he'd  got  through  with  me,  after  a  few  years, 
an'  the  baby  was  dead  in  the  hospital,  my  people 
were  so  damned  respectable  that  I  didn't  dare  go 
home  to  them.  Wall  Street  had  been  plungin';  no- 
body'd  buy  stocks;  I  couldn't  get  a  job  there.  Times 
was  hard  and  I  couldn't  find  a  place  anywhere  else. 
It  was  up  to  me  to  starve  to  death,  go  into  a  home 
an'  be  marked  for  life,  or  get  real  money  the  best 
way  I  could." 

She  paused,  and  Wesley  found  himself  interject 
ing  an  urging  "  Well?  " 

"  Well,  I  got  the  money.  My  broker  put  me  up 
in  a  flat.  He  stole  the  cash  to  do  it,  an'  when  the 
fly-cops  got  next,  he  blew  out  his  brains.  I  was  still 
high  and  dry,  so  I  got  a  couple  of  girls  to  help  me. 
Then  I  met  Mike  O'Malley's  brother — the  one  that's 
dead  now — an'  he  squared  things  for  me  so's  I  could 
open  up  the  place  you  knew.  He  owned  my  joint 


290         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

an'  was  right  and  regular.  He  saw  to  it  I  wasn't 
bothered,  an'  we  paid  for  protection  an'  furnished 
an  address  when  his  brothsr  needed  one  for  voters. 
I  never  had  no  trouble  'till  O'Malley's  brother 
was  dead  an'  you  queered  mz  with  Mike  him 
self." 

"And  is  that  all?" 

"  Yes,  that's  all.  It's  abou^:  what  you'd  learn 
from  any  other  woman  in  my  line  of  work.  But  I'll 
tell  you  one  thing :  I  got  my  girls  however  I  could— 
a  lot  of  'em  because  your  friends  brought  'em,  an' 
everyone  that  was  brought  that  way  I  paid  for,  fair 
an'  square  an'  good  an'  heavy;  I  had  to  keep  the 
women  down  because  expenses  was  so  high;  but  no 
man  was  ever  cheated  in  my  place,  an'  no  man  was 
ever  robbed  with  my  knowledge.  I  may  have  bad 
habits  of  my  own,  even  for  my  sort  of  a  life;  but 
I  always  treat  my  customers  on  the  level,  an' 
I  always  see  that  my  girls  treat  'em  on  the  level, 
too." 

"  What  about  the  hangers-on?  "  asked  Wesley. 

"  You  mean  about  Angel?  Well,  I  played  double 
because  I  didn't  know  who  was  goin'  to  be  on  top, 
an'  in  this  business  you've  always  got  to  be  on  the 
winnin'  side.  Now  you  are  on  top  an'  there  can't 
be  no  question.  I'm  in  this  line  because  I've  got  to 
live;  I  couldn't  do  nothin'  else;  an'  I'm  goin'  to 
keep  on  in  it  as  long  as  I  live.  You  see  now  that 
I've  always  been  on  the  level  in  one  way;  you  see 
that  I  haven't  no  reason  now  not  to  be  on  the  level 
in  the  other  way. — Will  you  go  an'  fix  it  with 
O'Malley?" 

He  did  fix  it.    He  fixed  it  that  afternoon,  and  he 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         291 

fixed  it  so  firmly  that,  within  ten  days,  Rose,  with 
her  former  minions  gathered  from  the  corners  where 
she  had  hidden  them,  was  living  and  prospering  ii> 
the  house  that  Riley  had  raided. 
Impartial  Justice  had  been  satisfied. 


XX 

THE  SANCTITY  OF  THE  HOME 

DESTINY,  busy  as  she  had  been  with  the  af 
fairs  of  Rose  Legere,  had  not  neglected  the 
usually  serene  residence  of  Mrs.  Ferdinand 
Wapping  Chamberlin.  For  ten  hours  the  invalid  her 
self  had  been  fretful.  This  had  reacted  upon  the 
gentle  nature  of  Mistress  Madelaine,  who  had  in 
turn  made  the  nurse  to  suffer,  and  the  nurse,  in  her 
own  phrase,  had  "  taken  it  out  on  "  Lena  Johnson, 
the  Swedish  cook. 

"  An'  it's  all  ban  because  that  son  of  another  hus 
band  ban  comin'  home,"  said  the  naturally  good- 
tempered  Lena,  in  an  effort  to  pass  along  the  general 
discontent  to  Violet. 

"  What  of  that?  "  Violet  asked.  "  Is  he  home  so 
seldom  that  we've  got  to  get  the  whole  house  ready 
for  him?" 

It  appeared  from  Lena's  answer  that  the  young 
man  was  home  far  more  frequently  than  his  mother's 
h'nances  could  well  afford.  When  he  honored  the 
Chamberlin  roof  with  his  presence,  he  generally  man 
aged  to  secure  all  the  money  within  reach  and  to  de 
vote  that  money  to  sociological  researches  that  kept 
him  out  until  the  lesser  hours  of  the  morning.  These 
stubborn  pursuits  were,  it  seemed,  highly  disapproved 
of  by  both  his  mother  and  his  sister,  yet  both  his 

292, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         293 

mother  and  his  sister  hated  his  father,  the  divorced 
husband  of  the  remarried  Mrs.  Chamberlin;  and  as 
the  son  and  brother  constantly  threatened  that  any 
interference  would  result  in  a  transfer  of  his  affec 
tionate  borrowings  to  the  bank-account  of  his  sire, 
both  women  were,  during  his  intermittent  residence 
with  them,  torn  between  their  improbation  of  his 
pursuits  and  their  fear  that  he  would  desert  the 
maternal  house  for  the  paternal  club. 

"  What's  his  name?  "  asked  Violet,  as  she  lent  a 
hand  at  the  preparation  of  dinner. 

"  Philip,"  answered  Lena,  "  an'  it  ought  to  be 
Hungry  Haakon." 

And  yet,  when  the  prodigal  reached  the  house  that 
evening  and,  admitting  himself  with  his  own  latch 
key,  hurried  into  the  library  where  his  mother  and 
sister,  the  former  on  the  couch  and  the  latter  seated 
beside  it,  were  awaiting  the  announcement  that  din 
ner  was  served,  he  would  not  have  appeared,  to  any 
stranger  that  could  see  him,  a  much  worse  young 
man  than  most  young  men. 

"  Hello !  "  he  cried,  kissing  both  women  lightly 
on  the  cheek.  "  Sister  more  of  a  lure  for  susceptible 
hearts  than  ever !  " 

"  Much  chance  /  have !  "  murmured  black-eyed 
Madelaine,  brushing  aside  a  careful  blonde  curl  dis 
ordered  by  his  onslaught. 

u  And  the  Mutter  getting  better  every  day,"  pur 
sued  the  unabashed  youth. 

"  Your  mother,"  said  Mrs.  Chamberlin,  her  heavy 
brows  rising  almost  to  the  level  of  her  lace  cap,  "  will 
never  be  herself  again,  and  you  well  know  it." 

"  Poof !    A  lean  horse  for  a  long  race,  Mutter." 


294         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Mrs.  Chamberlin  waved  a  thin  hand  in  dismissal 
of  all  discussion. 

"  If  you  mean  to  dress  for  dinner,"  she  said, 
"  you  had  better  begin,  Philip." 

"  No  use.  I  have  an  engagement  for  to-night  in 
circles  where  evening  clothes  are  rarely  considered 
quite  proper,  and  I  washed  up  at  the  club." 

"  Oh,  then  you  stopped  there  before  coming  to 
your  home  ?  " 

"  It  was  on  my  way." 

"  And  you  of  course  saw  that  terrible  man?  " 

This  being  the  term  in  which  Mrs.  Chamberlin 
habitually  referred  to  the  husband  that  had  been  so 
wicked  as  to  permit  her,  after  her  elopement  with 
Chamberlin,  to  institute  and  win  a  suit  for  divorce, 
her  son  merely  nodded. 

"But  what's  the  use  of  bothering  about  that?" 
he  demanded.  "  It  was  on  the  way,  I  tell  you. 
Cheer  up :  one  may  smile  and  smile  and  be  a  woman 
still." 

But  his  hearers,  by  way  of  response  to  this  advice, 
sighed  audibly. 

"  I  don't  think  it  was  very  considerate  of  you, 
Philip,"  vouchsafed  the  younger.  "  You  must  re 
member  that  when  you  got  that  last  check  from 
mother " 

"  Madelaine!  "  cautioned  Mrs.  Chamberlin. 

"  I  don't  care,  dear.  Philip,  you  must  remember 
that  when  you  got  that  last  check  from  mother,  it 
was  on  your  distinct  promise  that  you  would  not  see 
your  father  again  for  a  year." 

"  And  don't  you  remember,"  retorted  Philip, 
"  that  I  afterwards,  upon  reflection,  distinctly  with- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         295 

drew  that  distinct  promise  as  utterly  and  in  essence 
unfilial?  A  woman  can  always  remember  more 
things  than  a  man  has  forgotten,  and  forget  what 
ever  she  doesn't  want  to  remember.  If  it  had  been 
an  honest  woman  instead  of  an  honest  man  that 
Diogenes  was  looking  for,  he'd  have  had  to 
throw  away  his  lantern  and  hire  a  portable  light 
house." 

But  he  kissed  the  girl  as  he  said  this,  and  pressed 
his  mother's  hand. 

"  The  trouble  with  you  two,"  he  declared,  "  is 
that  you  don't  get  about  enough.  Seclusion  makes 
you  serious." 

"  I  wish,"  said  Mrs.  Chamberlin,  "  that  you  had 
brought  me  back  the  news  that  you  had  grown  more 
like  us." 

"  More  serious?  Still  harping  on  your  son,  dear! 
No,  I'm  sorry  to  disappoint  you,  but  I've  about  given 
up  all  hope  of  marrying  money,  and  marrying  any 
thing  else  is  an  impossibility.  I  must  be  getting  on 
in  years.  You  know  how  it  is :  as  we  grow  older  we 
become  more  particular  and  less  desirable— when 
we're  old  enough  to  have  learned  properly  to  play 
the  game  of  love,  we're  too  old  to  play  it." 

"  You're  a  mere  boy,"  observed  Madelaine,  with  a 
toss  of  her  blonde  curls. 

"  And  you  talk  like  one,"  said  Mrs.  Chamberlin, 
smiling  in  spite  of  herself. 

"  I'd  never  think  of  accepting  anybody  so  young 
as  you  are,"  the  girl  added. 

Philip  pulled  her  pink  ear. 

"That's  right,  Queen  Mab,"  he  agreed;  "wait 
till  a  man  is  large  and  round  and  settled.  And  when 


296         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

you  do  marry,  marry  for  keeps:  a  little  marriage 
is  a  dangerous  thing,  eh,  Mutter?" 

"  Philip !  " 

What  more  she  would  have  said  to  this  criticism 
of  her  own  estate,  Mrs.  Chamberlin's  son  was  not 
just  then  to  hear,  for  a  Japanese  gong  interrupted 
her  with  the  melodious  announcement  of  dinner,  and 
the  son  snatched  his  protesting  mother  in  his  arms 
and,  with  Madelaine  following,  bore  her  into  the 
brightly  lighted  dining-room. 

He  looked  at  the  shining  silver  and  gleaming  linen 
and  glass  and  china,  and  he  saw  the  pale  liquid  that 
filled  one  of  the  glasses  at  his  own  accustomed  place. 

"Good!"  he  cried.  "I  hope  Lena's  hand  has 
not  forgotten  its  cunning.  Stolen  waters  are  sweet, 
but  the  best  cocktail  is  a  dry  one." 

And  then,  with  his  living  burden  still  in  his  strong 
arms,  he  looked  across  the  table  and  into  the  eyes 
of  the  new  servant. 

The  new  servant,  from  the  shadow,  returned  that 
gaze.  She  saw  before  her,  in  the  person  of  her  em 
ployer's  son,  Philip  Beekman,  the  black-haired,  gray- 
eyed  young  waster  that  had  once  promised  her  help 
in  the  house  of  Rose  Legere.  On  her  part,  Violet 
could  have  no  doubt,  and  it  was  only  with  the  utmost 
exercise  of  self-control  that  she  continued  her  duties. 
But  for  Philip  certainty  was  not  immediately  obtain 
able.  He  saw  many  girls  in  the  surroundings  in 
which  he  had  first  seen  Violet,  and  her  he  would 
probably  long  since  have  forgotten  had  it  not  been 
for  the  appeal  that  she  had  made  to  his  surface  emo 
tions.  Nevertheless,  the  walls  of  his  own  home  did 
not,  in  this  case,  form  a  setting  that  made  for  easy 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         297 

identification,  and,  besides,  though  this  woman  had 
recovered  some  degree  of  her  health,  the  best  of  her 
looks  would  never  return.  Beauty  is  the  quality  most 
remembered  by  such  men  as  Philip  Beekman,  and 
beauty  lost  is  the  best  disguise  against  them.  Philip, 
therefore,  quietly  deposited  his  mother  in  her  chair, 
and  continued  his  easy  raillery  until  the  soup  had 
been  served  and  the  little  family  had  been  left,  for 
a  time,  alone. 

"  New  maid?  "  he  then  casually  inquired. 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Chamberlin,  "  and  actually  a 
fairly  competent  one." 

"What's  her  name?" 

"  Bella." 

"Any  more?" 

"  Really,  I  don't  recall  her  family  name,  Philip. 
What  possible  difference  can  it  make  ?  " 

"  I  suppose,"  said  Madelaine,  "  that  he  thinks  her 
pallor  interesting." 

"  Nonsense,   Madelaine !  " 

"  Her  last  name  is  Nimick,  Philip." 

"  Oh !  "  said  Philip,  inwardly  reflecting  that,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  a  name  could  not  much  signify. 
"  I  was  merely  attracted  by  the  fact  that  she  didn't 
precisely  resemble  a  servant.  Have  you  never  no 
ticed  how  all  men  look  as  if  they  belonged  to  the  class 
below  their  own,  and  all  women  to  the  class  above? 
It  seems  as  if  a  man  could  never  rise  above  his  en 
vironment,  and  as  if  a  woman  could  never  descend 
to  hers." 

He  did  not  again  refer  to  the  subject,  but  the  sub 
ject  was,  during  all  the  meal,  keenly  conscious  that 
his  gray  eyes  were  covertly  watching  her.  She  moved 


293         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

about  the  room  with  increasing  difficulty.  Her  hand 
shook  as  she  brought  the  salad-bowl,  and  she  spilled 
some  of  his  coffee  on  the  cloth. 

As  soon  as  Lena  had  left  the  kitchen  and  gone 
upstairs,  Beekman  came  into  the  pantry.  His  man 
ner,  neither  that  which  she  had  once  known  nor 
that  which  she  had  more  lately  observed,  was  quick 
and  threatening;  his  frank  face  was  flushed  with 
anger. 

"  Your  name  is  Violet,"  he  said  in  a  voice  that, 
though  low,  shook  under  the  restraint  that  he  put 
upon  it. 

She  was  standing  beneath  a  gas-jet,  a  little  column 
of  dishes  in  her  hand.  The  cruel  light  showed  the 
havoc  that  had  been  wrought  upon  her,  but  it  also 
showed  the  marks  that  no  years  or  change  could 
alter. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  her  own  voice  scarce  a  whisper. 

"  Did  you "  he  bit  his  lip.  "  Did  you  come 

here  to  scare  me?"  he  demanded. 

She  put  down  the  dishes. 

"What  do  you  mean,  Mr.  Beekman?" 

"  Because  I  haven't  any  money,  you  know." 

"  Mr.  Beekman !  " 

She  put  her  hand  before  her  face,  and  he  saw 
that  he  had  been  wrong. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  sulkily  said.  "  In  the 
circumstances,  it  wasn't  an  unnatural  supposition, 
though  my  mother  thoroughly  understands  my  man 
ner  of  life;  but  I  see  now  that  I  shouldn't  have 
said  it." 

He  paused,  and  then,  because  he  hated  to  be  in 
the  wrong,  he  hunted  about  for  another  excuse  for 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         299 

attack,  and,  finding  one,  became  more  angry  than 
before. 

"  Only  how  dared  you,"  he  asked,  "  how  did  you 
dare  to  come  into  this  house?  " 

Violet  bowed  her  russet  head. 

"  I  didn't  know  it  was  yours,"  she  said. 

"You  didn't  know?" 

"  How  could  I  ?  Lena  didn't  happen  to  say  noth- 
in'  about  you  before  to-day,  an'  your  mother  has  a 
different  name." 

"  Don't  talk  of  my  mother !  "  he  commanded. 

Had  Violet  known  all  the  truth  of  her  mistress,  it 
would  probably  have  flashed  over  even  the  servant's 
dull  brain  that  the  difference  between  a  woman 
beaten  into  slavery  and  a  woman  that  married 
the  man  who,  during  her  first  marriage,  had  been 
her  lover,  was  a  difference  not  of  kind,  but  of 
degree,  and  of  a  degree  decidedly  in  the  ethical 
favor  of  the  former.  However,  she  held  her 
tongue. 

It  was  the  best  shield  she  could  have  chosen. 
Through  silence  few  fits  of  anger  are  strong  enough 
to  reach,  and  the  quick  temper  of  Beekman  began 
slowly  to  spend  itself. 

"  I  don't  see  how  you  could  come  into  any  decent 
house,"  he  grumbled,  "  no  matter  whether  you  knew 
whose  it  was  or  not." 

Still  Violet  did  not  answer. 

"  I  suppose  you  didn't  think  about  that,  though," 
Philip  pursued. 

Violet  was  as  yet  too  stunned  at  all  adequately  to 
feel.  With  a  shaking  finger  she  drew  invisible 
arabesques  upon  the  shelf  beside  her. 


300         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  How  did  you  get  away  from  Rose's,  anyhow?1* 
he  asked. 

Slowly  she  raised  her  head.  Slowly  she  fixed  him 
with  her  tired  blue  eyes.  And  slowly,  still  drawing 
arabesques  now  unregarded,  she  answered: 

"  Does  that  make  much  difference,  Mr.  Beek- 
man?" 

"  Wasn't  I  interested?  "  he  blustered. 

"  Because,  you  see,"  she  concluded,  "  however  it 
was,  it  wasn't  by  none  of  the  help  you  promised." 

The  thrust  just  pierced  his  armor  of  convention. 

"  Oh,  well,"  he  said,  "  what  could  I  do?  I  wanted 
to  help — you  know  that — but  what  could  I  do?  " 

"  Nothin' !  "  Her  eyes  clouded  as  if  they  looked 
at  something  which,  though  clear  to  sight,  passed 
all  explaining.  "  Nothin',  I  suppose." 

The  words  lent  him  courage. 

"  And  I  can't  do  anything  now,"  he  went  on,  his 
anger  cold,  but  his  determination  unchanged.  "  I'm 
sorry  for  you — on  my  word  of  honor,  I  am  sorry  for 
you  with  my  whole  heart,  Violet — but  you  can't  stay 
here — you  must  see  that  you  can't  stay  in  this  house 
another  night." 

Her  eyes  were  still  on  his. 

"  I  know  you  think  that,"  she  replied,  as  if 
puzzled  and  seeking  a  solution.  "  An'  I  know  what 
you  think  goes. — But,  myself,  I  can't  see  why 
not." 

"  But,  Violet,  just  consider !  "  he  cried,  his  hands 
outstretched. 

"  You  wanted  me  to  get  away  an'  get  a  decent 
job,"  she  dully  answered. 

"  Not  here." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         301 

"What's  the  difference?  What's  the  difference 
whether  it's  here  or  somewheres  else?  I  can't  see." 

"  But  here  all  the  time  I  should  know." 

"  Don't  you  know,  wherever  you  are,  about  lots 
of  others  that  don't  get  away?  An'  does  that  hurt 
you?  Wouldn't  you  know  about  me  wherever  you 
are,  about  me  wherever  I  went?  An'  would  that 
hurt  me?" 

"  You  don't  understand!  " 

He  seemed  to  charge  her  with  her  admitted  in 
comprehension  as  if  it  were  a  crime. 

"  No,  I  don't,"  she  repeated. 

"  Can't  you  see  that  if  you  were  somewhere  else, 
it  would  be  different?  " 

"  I'm  sorry,  but  I  can't." 

"  Not  if  you  were  where  nobody  knew  about 
you?" 

"  No,  I  don't  see  that,  Mr.  Beekman.  I  haven't 
got  any  disease  to  give  people." 

"  I  wasn't  thinking  that." 

"  Well,  you  wouldn't  tell  on  me  to  the  people 
I  went  to  if  I  went  somewheres  else?  " 

"  Certainly  I  wouldn't." 

"  An'  you  don't  think  I'd  steal,  do  you?  " 

"  Of  course  not." 

"  Nor — nor  get  anybody  who  was  kind  to  me  into 
the  sort  of  a  hell  I  worked  so  hard  to  get  myself  out 
of?" 

"How  could  I  think  it?  What  are  you  driving 
at,  Violet?" 

'This:  that  if  all  them  things  is  the  way  you 
say,  I'm  fit  for  any  job  I'm  able  to  do — an'  I'm  able 
to  do  this  one." 


302         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Not  in  this  house." 

"What's  the  difference  where?"  Her  voice  was 
still  low,  and  her  words  still  came  slowly;  but  she 
was,  however  imperfectly  and  painfully,  beginning 
to  think — which  is  a  very  dangerous  thing  in  any 
exploited  individual.  "  What's  the  difference 
where?  "  she  asked.  "  What  you  know  don't  make 
me  no  worse,  an'  what  I  know  don't  make  me  no 
better.  The  truth's  the  truth.  What's  happened's 
happened.  I  used  to  be  a  girl  in  Rose's  house,  no 
matter  if  I  was  now  workin'  in  your  house  an'  you 
do  know  what  I  used  to  be.  Wherever  I  am,  I'm 
what  I  am;  your  knowin'  it  don't  help  or  hinder; 
an'  if  I'm  fit  for  next  door  I'm  fit  for  here." 

Philip  Beekman  passed  his  long  fingers  through 
his  black  hair.  It  was  the  gesture  she  had  seen  him 
employ  on  that  remembered  night  at  Rose's,  but  now 
it  had  a  new  significance.  The  young  man  was  as 
much  the  creature  of  his  surroundings  as  Violet  was 
the  creation  of  hers.  He  could  no  more  appreciate 
her  point  of  view  than  she  could  comprehend  his. 
It  was  as  if  they  spoke  different  tongues.  Beekman 
was  powerless  to  argue  further,  and  when  a  man 
reaches  that  condition,  he  takes  a  firm  stand  upon 
authority. 

"All  right,"  he  said;  "we  won't  waste  words. 
The  hard  fact  is  that  you've  got  to  go.  I'm  sorry, 
but  you've  got  to  go  and  go  now." 

She  bowed  her  head;  she  had  finished. 

He  wished  she  would  answer;  he  wished  she  would 
&y  into  a  rage;  but  as  she  remained  dumb,  he  con 
tinued  : 

"  I  suppose  your  hat  and  jacket  are  in  the  kitchen. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         303 

You  can  drop  me  a  card  telling  me  where  to  send 
your  trunk.  I'll  explain  this  to  your — to  my  mother 
somehow.  I'll  do  whatever  I  can  for  you — outside." 

A  slow  shake  of  her  russet  head  was  her  reply. 

"  I'll  give  you  a  recommendation." 

"  I  won't  need  none,  Mr.  Beekman." 

"  I — I  think  I've  got  fifty  dollars  somewhere  in 
my  clothes." 

"  I  was  paid  my  wages  only  this  mornin'." 

He  looked  at  her  in  gray-eyed  amazement. 

"  But  I  say,"  he  began,  "  you  aren't  going  to — 
you  don't  mean  you  won't " 

She  did  not  answer.  She  moved  slowly  and  quietly 
away.  She  went  to  the  kitchen,  got  her  shabby 
beaver  hat  and  her  long  coat. 

Philip,  in  the  pantry,  remained  as  she  had  left 
him,  erect,  eyes  and  mouth  wide. 

A  moment  later  he  heard  the  area  door  open  and 
close. 


XXI 

AN  ANCIENT  PROBLEM 

«    AN*   twent'    from    Rosie   Legere's,"   said  An- 

/•%       gel,  "  maka  two  hundre'." 

Hermann  Hoffmann,  alone  behind  the 
bar  in  Schleger's  saloon,  and  half  asleep  as  he  bent 
over  a  thumbed  and  stained  copy  of  the  last  even 
ing's  paper,  scarcely  raised  his  head.  It  was  half- 
past  one  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Except  for  An- 
gelelli  and  the  man  to  whom  he  was  talking  at  a 
table  by  the  door,  the  place  was  empty  of  customers, 
and  so  unconcerned  were  these  two  late-comers  that, 
had  he  wished  it,  every  word  of  their  conversation 
could  have  been  taken  down  by  the  bar-keeper. 

But  the  bar-keeper  did  not  wish  it.  He  knew  both 
the  men,  and  had  heard  something  of  the  character 
of  each,  as  every  good  bar-keeper  comes  to  know 
and  to  hear  about  most  of  the  regular  patrons  of 
the  establishment  that  employs  him.  With  Angel 
he  had  even  had  a  nodding  acquaintance  in  the  days 
of  the  brewery-wagon,  and  since  he  had  donned  the 
white  jacket  he  had  seen  often  the  narrow-chested, 
stoop-shouldered,  slouching  Austrian  now  in  confer 
ence  with  the  dapper  Rafael.  He  had  been  told 
that  this  Austrian,  with  his  bristling  brown  hair, 
pale  face,  and  thin  mouth,  pulled  downward  at  one 
corner  by  an  ugly  scar,  made  his  regular  living  by 
appropriating  the  wages  of  a  girl  that  he  nightly 

304 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         305 

drove  forth  to  scour  the  dark  streets,  earning  what 
money  she  could  from  what  looks  were  left  her  and 
stealing  what  she  could  not  earn.  And  Hermann 
knew  that,  now  an  election  was  near,  both  of  these 
proud  possessors  of  the  suffrage  were  doing  their 
exacted  duty  for  the  powers  that  permitted  them  to 
thrive,  and  were,  like  the  army  of  others  in  their  own 
profession,  through  all  New  York,  Chicago,  Boston, 
Philadelphia,  through  the  tenderloin  of  every  Amer 
ican  city,  providing  for  the  voting  of  repeaters,  of 
dead  men,  of  men  that  never  were,  in  the  interests 
of  whichever  of  the  two  great  political  parties  hap 
pens  to  be  in  control  of  the  city  where  such  votes  are 
needed. 

"  Mirka,"  said  Angel,  laying  down  his  gold- 
rimmed  fountain-pen  and  looking  up  from  the  back 
of  the  envelope  on  which  he  had  been  making  his 
calculations,  "  we  weell  need  a  hundre'  more." 

Mirka,  the  Austrian,  tried  to  smile,  but  that  ugly 
scar  at  the  corner  of  his  mouth  caught  the  smile  in 
the  making  and  pulled  it  down  into  a  sinister 
sneer. 

"  I  can  .smoke  out  fifty  if  you  can,"  he  said. 

"Da  sama  kind?" 

"  Yes." 

Hermann,  behind  the  bar,  frankly  yawned.  He 
remembered,  with  a  slow  smile,  how,  when  he  had 
first  come  across  such  practices,  years  ago,  he  had 
gone  to  the  ward-leader  of  that  party  in  whose  in 
terests  the  work  was  being  done.  He  remembered 
how  this  potentate  had  first  assured  him  that  he  had 
"  heard  wrong,"  and  finally  met  his  persistence  with 
a  warning  that  he  had  better  keep  his  mouth  shut. 


306        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

He  remembered  how,  at  the  rival  headquarters,  he 
had  been  told  that  there  was  always  a  mass  of  such 
evidence,  none  of  which  could  be  effectively  used  be 
fore  election,  and  how,  when  he  had  ventured  to 
suggest  that  an  election-offense  was  punishable  after 
election-day,  he  had  been  ridiculed.  And  lastly,  he 
knew  that  his  own  Socialist  friends  had  already  all 
the  information  that  he  had  now  obtained,  but  could 
do  no  more  at  the  polls  than  lodge  protests  that 
would  be  overruled  by  the  election-judges  and  sub 
sequently  pigeon-holed  by  the  courts. 

"  All  right,"  Angel  was  saying,  as  he  pocketed  his 
pen  and  tore  the  envelope  into  small  bits,  which  he 
tossed  deftly  across  the  room  into  the  gutter  beneath 
the  bar.  "  I  feexa  heem.  I  geta  da  rest." 

The  two  men  rose  and  stepped  to  the  bar  for  a 
nightcap  of  whiskey. 

Already  the  Austrian  had  drunk  more  than  was 
good  for  his  temper,  but  Hermann,  whose  eye  was 
usually  exact  in  discerning  such  matters,  was  sleepy 
to-night,  and  did  not  notice  this.  Angel  poured  a 
bountiful  portion  from  the  cool  metal-stoppered 
bottle  that  Hoffmann  shoved  clanking  toward  him. 
Mirka  decanted  even  more,  and  then,  momentarily 
released  his  hold  of  the  bottle  to  speak  to  his  com 
panion.  Hermann,  thinking  both  men  satisfied, 
reached  for  the  liquor. 

"  Keep  your  dirty  fingers  off  of  that !  "  cried 
Mirka,  with  no  trace  of  his  nationality  in  his  speech. 
"  Can't  you  wait  till  I  pour  a  real  man's  drink?  " 

Hermann  flushed. 

"It's  a  bath,  den,  you're  goin'  to  dake?"  he 
asked. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         307 

*"  I  will  if  I  like,  you  damned  fool !  "  rejoined 
Mirka,  his  eyes  warming. 

Hermann's  blue  glance  surveyed  the  uncouth, 
slouching  figure. 

"All  righd,"  he  said;  "you  need  von." 

The  Austrian  glowered.  Then,  tilting  back  his 
bristling  head,  he  tossed  the  liquor  down  his  long 
throat. 

"  Give  me  another,  you  Dutchie,"  he  ordered, 
pushing  his  glass  across  the  bar. 

Angel  began  a  quieting  word,  but  Mirka  broke 
in,  still  addressing  Hermann. 

"  Get  a  move  on,  or  I'll  break  yer  face,  Dutchie!  " 
he  insisted. 

Hermann's  jaw  was  suddenly  set  in  a  rigid  line. 
He  remained  motionless.  , 

*'  Come  on,  now!  "  said  Mirka. 

"  Don'  maka  these  treecks,"  protested  Angelelli, 
dividing  his  plea  between  his  hearers,  and  placing 
his  hand  upon  the  Austrian's  shoulder. 

"  You  shut  up !  "  retorted  Mirka,  shaking  himself 
free.  "  And  you,  you  Dutch  fool,  give  me  a  drink — 
quick!" 

Hermann  did  not  obey.  He  saw  at  last  the  fel 
low's  condition. 

"  You've  had  enough,"  he  said. 

"  Mind  yer  own  business,"  snapped  the  Austrian. 

"  Dot's  what  I'm  doing,"  answered  Hermann, 
calmly  reaching  for  the  empty  glasses.  "  You're 
drunk." 

He  had  hardly  spoken  before  Mirka,  his  habitual 
lassitude  dropping  from  him  like  a  discarded  cloak, 
made  a  quick  leap  that  brought  him  half  across  the 


308         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

bar.  The  glasses  crashed,  the  bottle  was  overturned, 
and  in  the  Austrian's  waving,  clenched  right  hand 
there  flashed  a  knife. 

It  was  a  moment  of  action,  but  a  moment  only. 
From  one  side  of  the  bar,  Angel  had  gripped  Mirka 
by  the  waist  and  was  pulling  him  backward;  on 
the  other,  the  powerful  German  had  caught  the 
threatening  fist  and  now,  with  a  quick  twist,  sent 
the  knife  plunging  into  the  tub  below  the  beer- 
spigots. 

Spluttering  obscenities,  the  Austrian  was  dragged 
to  the  position  from  which  he  had  made  his  attack. 

"You  keepa  quiet!"  commanded  Angel  of  the 
one  combatant,  and  to  the  other:  "  You  getta  more 
fresh  with  your  mouth  an'  I  getta  you  fired." 

Hermann  had  recovered  the  knife  and  was  now 
calmly  drying  it  upon  a  bar-towel.  Such  incidents 
were  not  unusual  in  his  occupation  and,  now  that 
this  one  was  closed,  he  could  afford  to  smile  his 
answer  to  Rafael. 

Mirka,  on  the  other  hand,  though  still  tightly 
embraced  by  Angel,  was  trembling  with  rage. 

"  I'll  get  you  for  this,  Dutchie !  "  he  declared. 

"  So?  "  said  Hermann.  He  still  smiled,  but  he 
was  tired  of  being  called  Dutchie,  and  his  tongue 
ran  just  a  hair's  breadth  ahead  of  his  caution.  '  Try 
it,"  he  concluded;  "  try  it,  you  dirty  Austrian  loafer, 
und  I'll  somevheres  go  vhere  dose  names  you've  been 
makin'  oud  vill  get  you  vhat  you  deserve." 

"  Whata  you  say?"  Angel  kept  his  hold  upon 
his  friend,  but  the  reference  to  their  recent  occupa 
tion  brought  a  glint  of  anger  into  his  own  eyes. 

By  way  of  beginning  his  reply,  Hermann  smilingly 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE        309 

returned  the  knife  to  its  owner,  who  seized  it  with 
a  growl  of  malice. 

"  Neffer  mind  vhat  I  say  den,"  he  answered. 
"  Vhat  I  say  now  is  *  Goot-nighd.'  You  two  get 
oud." 

He  raised  his  thick  arm  to  point  to  the  door,  but 
in  the  manner  of  its  raising  there  was  another  sig 
nificance.  For  a  moment  Angel  and  Mirka  met 
hotly  his  steady  gaze.  Then  the  bar-keeper  raised 
carelessly  his  other  hand :  it  held  a  stout  bung-starter. 

The  two  men,  with  a  common  impulse,  turned  and 
silently  left  the  place. 

Hermann  was  not  afraid  of  them.  He  knew  that 
his  threat  of  betrayal  had  been  idle,  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  there  was  no  quarter  in  which  betrayal 
would  be  effective,  and  he  told  himself  that,  as  soon 
as  their  anger  and  their  drunkenness  had  in  some 
measure  subsided,  the  plotters  would  recognize  this. 
So  he  whistled  complacently  as  he  polished  the  bright 
surface  of  the  bar  and  did  not  hesitate,  when  he  be 
gan  at  last  to  wash  and  put  away  the  glasses,  to 
turn  his  back  to  the  swinging  door  of  the  saloon. 
The  campaign  was  not  one  that  was  considered  im 
portant  and,  personally,  he  cared  but  little  about  it 
or  what  enmities  it  might  awaken. 

The  campaigners  cared,  however,  a  great  deal. 
There  was  in  no  sane  mind  any  question  of  the  re 
sult,  but  so  mighty  is  custom  that  there  were  few 
sane  minds  that  did  not  publicly  pretend  to  be  in 
doubt  upon  the  issue. 

For  many  days  previously,  any  outsider,  reading 
the  newspapers  or  attending  the  mass-meetings  in 
Cooper  Union  and  Carnegie  Hall,  would  have  sup- 


3io        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

posed  that  a  prodigious  battle  was  waging  and  that 
the  result  would  be,  until  the  last  shot,  in  doubt. 
There  were  terrible  scareheads,  brutal  cartoons,  and 
extra  editions.  As  the  real  problem  was  whether 
one  organization  of  needy  men  should  remain  in 
control,  or  whether  another  should  replace  it,  there 
were  few  matters  of  policy  to  be  discussed;  and  so 
the  speechmaking  and  the  printing  resolved  them 
selves  into  personal  investigations,  and  attacks  upon 
character.  Private  detectives  were  hired,  records 
searched,  neighbors  questioned,  old  enemies  sought 
out,  and  family  feuds  revived.  Desks  were  broken 
open,  letters  bought,  anonymous  communications 
mailed,  boyhood  indiscretions  unearthed,  and  women 
and  men  hired  to  wheedle,  to  commit  perjury,  to 
entrap.  Whatever  was  discovered,  forged,  stolen, 
manufactured — whatever  truth  or  falsehood  could  be 
seized  by  whatever  means — was  blazoned  in  the 
papers,  shrieked  by  the  newsboys,  bawled  from  the 
cart-tails  at  the  corners  under  the  campaign  banners, 
in  the  light  of  the  torches  and  before  the  cheering 
crowds.  It  would  all  be  over  in  a  very  short  while; 
in  a  very  short  while  there  would  pass  one  another, 
with  pleasant  smiles,  in  court,  at  church,  and  along 
Broadway,  the  distinguished  gentlemen  that  were 
now,  before  big  audiences,  calling  one  another  adulter 
ers  and  thieves;  but  it  is  customary  for  distinguished 
gentlemen  so  to  call  one  another  during  a  manly  cam 
paign  in  this  successful  democracy  of  ours,  and  it 
seems  to  be  an  engrossing  occupation  while  the 
chance  endures. 

Though  he  often  trembled,  Wesley  Dyker,  per 
haps  because  his  records  of  any  sort  were  as  yet  but 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         311 

brief,  escaped  with  a  fairly  clean  skin  this  Yahoo 
discharge,  but  the  downpour  continued  all  about  him 
with  tremendous  vigor  and  at  tremendous  cost.  The 
Republican  leaders,  fully  expecting  defeat,  assessed 
their  supporters  just  as  heavily  as  if  they  were  cer 
tain  to  triumph,  spent  much  time  and  more  money 
and  no  end  of  breath.  The  Reformers,  under  vary 
ing  factional  names,  bewildered,  sometimes  advis 
edly,  the  independent  voter  by  here  joining  one  lead 
ing  party,  there  endorsing  another,  and  in  a  third 
place  clamoring  for  a  ballot  so  split  and  so  sub 
divided  that  the  average  man  could  in  no  wise  com 
prehend  it  when  marked.  The  Socialists,  to  be  sure, 
went  along  calmly  enough,  confessing  their  numeri 
cal  weakness  and  securely  seeing  In  the  small  increase 
of  the  present  day  the  promise  of  the  large  majority 
of  the  distant  morrow.  But  all  the  while  the  Demo 
cratic  organization  thundered  an  inch  forward  in  the 
light  and  ran  a  mile  forward  in  the  darkness  by  pre 
cisely  the  same  powers  as  were  invoked,  with  so  much 
smaller  results,  by  the  Republicans  and  the  Reform 
ers. 

Not  that  there  was  any  reason  to  doubt  the  or 
ganization's  victory.  There  was  none.  But  every 
organization  always  insists  that,  no  matter  how  easy 
the  skirmish,  its  leaders  must  so  manage  that  it  comes 
out  of  the  fray  to  all  appearances  stronger  than  it 
came  out  of  the  fray  preceding.  Each  majority  must 
be  larger  than  the  last,  and  so  the  lists  are  padded, 
and  the  repeaters  imported,  and  the  lodging-houses 
colonized,  and  the  organization,  like  the  frog  in 
La  Fontaine's  fable,  though  with  less  reason,  swells 
and  swells  against  the  hour  when  it  shall  finally  burst. 


312         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

The  saloons  were  crowded;  it  was  freely  predicted 
that,  the  season  being  prosperous,  votes  would  go 
at  no  lower  than  two  dollars,  and,  in  some  quar 
ters  and  some  instances,  as  high  as  five  dollars 
apiece. 

There  were  some  points,  however,  to  which  the 
tide  of  prosperity  had  not  risen,  and  one  of  these 
was  the  high  tenement  of  Katie  Flanagan.  The 
Irish  girl  returned  there  every  night  a  little  more 
discouraged  than  when  she  had  left  its  precarious 
shelter  in  the  morning,  as  doubtful  as  ever  of  Her 
mann's  ability  to  support  a  wife,  but  more  doubtful 
than  ever  of  her  own  ability  to  help,  should  they 
marry,  in  the  support  of  the  home.  At  the  shop, 
the  work  and  the  hours  weighed  more  and  more 
heavily  upon  her;  they  dragged  at  the  heels  of  her 
mind  when  she  endeavored  to  evade  the  insulting 
compliments  of  the  callow  youths  and  gray  men  that 
strolled  by  her  counter,  and  they  were  impedimenta 
that  made  it  daily  more  difficult  to  escape  without 
offense  the  oily  approaches  of  the  dignified  Mr.  Por 
ter. 

"  Sometimes,"  she  said  one  evening,  as  she  and 
Carrie  sat  over  their  meager  supper,  "  I  begin  won- 
derin'  again  whether  it's  worth  while  runnin'  away." 

The  striking  shirtwaist-maker,  who  had  spent  a 
long  day  on  picket-duty  before  a  Waverley  Place  fac 
tory,  looked  up  with  round  eyes  calmly  serious. 

11  That  is  what  I  am  wondering  all  the  time,"  she 
replied. 

Katie  made  an  impatient  movement  of  her  hand. 

"  Och,  now,"  she  generously  protested,  "  it's  all 
right  for  me  to  growl,  because  I've  got  a  job.  I 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         313 

don't  count,  an'  it's  just  me  habit.  But  you  mustn't 
do  it,  me  dear." 

"  I  am  not  complaining;  I  am  just  honestly  won 
dering,  that's  all." 

"  But  if  the  worst  came,  you  could  go  back  to 
work,  you  know." 

Carrie's  face  was  all  surprise. 

u  And  turn  traitor  to  my  friends  striking  in  my  own 
and  all  the  other  factories?"  she  asked.  "  Oh,  no; 
you  would  be  the  last  to  do  it  yourself,  Katie.  I 
would  rather  go  on  the  street." 

"  You  don't  mean  that,  darlin'." 

"  I  do  mean  it.  If  I  went  on  the  street,  I  would 
hurt  myself,  but  if  I  did  the  other  thing  I  would 
hurt  all  the  other  girls  in  the  union." 

She  spoke  quietly,  but  with  infinite  conviction,  and 
Katie  knew  the  forces  that  had  brought  about  this 
state  of  mind.  The  widespread  strike,  though  It  still 
continued,  was  a  failure.  Public  sentiment  had  never 
been  aroused;  the  employers  had  succeeded  in  securing 
non-union  labor,  whose  wages  they  were,  even  now, 
securely  reducing,  and  whose  privileges — granted  to 
entice  them  to  work — they  were  curbing;  their  politi 
cal  powers  earned  them  the  armed  assistance  of  the 
law ;  and  the  strikers'  ranks,  though  but  little  thinned 
by  desertion,  were  steadily  decreased  by  poverty,  by 
the  necessity  of  the  girls  to  find  other  sorts  of  work, 
by  illness,  and,  now  that  the  cold  autumn  had  set 
in,  by  death.  Carrie  was  underfed,  scantily  clothed, 
penniless,  and  Katie,  remembering  these  things, 
found  herself  without  reply. 

Had  she  needed  further  example  of  the  pressure 
of  conditions  upon  her  kind,  she  could  have  found 


3i4        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

it  in  an  incident  in  the  shop  on  the  day  following.  A 
bull-necked  young  man,  with  ruddy  cheeks  and  a 
certainty  of  manner  that  spoke  as  loudly  in  his  eyes 
and  his  scarf-pin  as  in  his  voice,  sauntered  up  to 
the  silk-stocking  counter,  where  she  happened  then 
to  be  stationed,  and  began  turning  over  the  wares 
displayed. 

"  Have  you  been  waited  on?  "  inquired  Katie. 

"  No,"  said  the  young  man,  looking  at  her  stead 
ily;  "but  I'd  like  you  to  wait  on  me.  Are  you 
busy?  " 

Katie  said  nothing,  but  stood  there.  The  young 
man  said  nothing.  Katie  began  to  finger  the  boxes 
before  her,  but  she  felt  that  the  young  man  was  look 
ing  only  at  her. 

"  What  quality  would  you  like  me  to  show  you?  " 
she  asked. 

"  Well,"  parried  the  customer,  "  what  quality  do 
you  like?" 

She  shot  one  glance  at  him:  he  was  still  looking 
at  her. 

"  We  have  only  the  best  at  this  counter,"  she 
answered,  with  a  slight  flush.  "  You'll  be  findin'  the 
cheaper  the  sixth  aisle  to  your  right." 

But  the  young  man  only  laughed  with  unconcern, 
and  continued  to  keep  his  gaze  on  her  lowered  Irish 
blue  eyes. 

"  I  can  afford  the  best  of  everything,"  he  said. 

There  was  a  pause.  Katie  raised  her  eyes  and 
met  his  own  without  flinching.  He  smiled,  but  he 
was  quite  too  satisfied  with  his  own  charms  to  notice 
that  the  salesgirl  was  not  smiling. 

"  What  time  do  you  quit  work?  "  he  inquired. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         315 

"  I  never  quit." 

She  said  this  as  if  she  were  closing  a  door,  but 
the  young  man  proceeded  imperturbably  to  rattle  at 
the  knob. 

"  I  thought,"  he  said,  "  that  you  might  like  to 
eat  a  little  dinner  over  at  the  '  York '  with  me  this 
evening." 

"  Thanks,"  the  girl  answered,  "  but  I  do  all  me 
eatin'  with  me  husband. — Will  you,  please,  be  tellin' 
me  what  sort  of  stockin's  you  want?  " 

The  young  man  grinned.  He  seemed  to  enjoy 
what  he  took  to  be  her  playful  repartee. 

"  Look  here,"  he  replied,  "  my  wife  is  away  back 
home,  and  I'm  all  alone  over  at  that  hotel." 

He  was  leaning  airily  toward  her,  both  hands  on 
the  counter.  Katie,  standing  opposite,  leaned  toward 
him.  She  answered  his  smile,  but  he  could  not  see 
that  her  smile  was  not  of  his  own  sort. 

"  Do  you  want  to  buy  anything?  "  she  demanded. 

'  Yes,"  said  the  customer,  meeting  her  gaze  again. 
"Will  you  sell?" 

It  was  no  unusual  incident,  no  more  unusual  than 
the  coming  incident  of  Mirka's  attack  upon  Her 
mann,  but  the  girl  had  reached  the  end  of  her  en 
durance,  and  what  followed  across  that  counter  was 
not  unlike  what  was  to  occur  across  Ludwig  Schle- 
ger's  bar.  Katie  opened  her  firm,  pink  palm  and 
smacked  the  young  bargain-seeker  smartly  across  the 
mouth. 

There  was  no  immediate  consequence.  The  aisle 
was  too  crowded  to  allow  any  but  the  nearest  em 
ployees  to  witness  the  blow,  and  the  crowd  was  too 
intent  upon  its  own  thousand  errands  to  heed  what 


3i6         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

happened  before  its  eyes.  One  or  two  salesgirls 
stood  still  at  their  work,  petrified  by  alarm.  One 
or  two  customers  hesitated  and  chuckled.  And  then, 
as  the  young  man  with  a  face  of  crimson  shouldered 
his  way  into  a  hurried  oblivion  from  which  he  never 
reappeared,  the  rush  of  business  sent  the  clerks  whirl 
ing  about  their  own  tasks  and  sent  the  crowd  hurry 
ing  about  its  own  purposes. 

But  Katie  knew  that  more  would  follow,  and  that 
what  would  follow  would  be  an  interview  with  Mr. 
Porter.  The  shop's  system  of  surveillance  missed 
nothing,  and  within  a  half-hour  the  girl  was  standing 
in  the  dark  office  where  she  had  first  been  hired. 

In  his  likeness  to  a  Sunday-school  superintendent 
Mr.  Porter  was  shocked  and  grieved  to  hear  that 
any  young  lady  in  the  Lennox  store  would  strike  a 
purchaser.  In  his  likeness  to  a  surgeon  he  promptly 
declared  that  there  ought  to  be  no  issue  short  of 
expulsion.  And  in  his  own  hidden  character — deep 
in  his  own  abominable  character — he  was  wondering 
whether  he  could  not  turn  this  incident  to  the  ad 
vantage  that  he  had  so  long  sought. 

"  The  viper  was  insultin'  me,"  said  Katie. 
"  Are  you  quite  sure  of  that,  Miss  Flanagan?  " 
"  Sure  I'm  sure.    Do  you  have  to  wait  for  a  snake 
to  bite  you  before  you  know  what  he's  up  to?" 
"  You  could  have  called  the  floor-walker." 
"  And  been  fined  for  me  pains,  Mr.  Porter." 
Mr.  Porter  tapped  his  desk  and  kept  his  eyes  on 
his  fingers. 

"  I  find,"  he  said  slowly,  "  that  most  men  do  not 
make  approaches  without  some  encouragement,  in 
either  word  or  manner,  on  the  part  of  the  girl.  I 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         317 

also  find  that  such  occurrences  as  this  are  very  rare 
in  the  experience  of  most  of  the  girls  in  our  employ." 

He  stopped,  but  Katie  stood  silent  by  the  arm 
of  the  desk,  her  lips  compressed,  a  frown  between 
her  arched  black  brows.  He  sent  a  crooked  glance 
up  at  her,  and  then  resumed : 

"  I  scarcely  ever  have  a  case  of  this  sort  to  deal 
with.  I  wonder  why,  if  such  things  are  done  by 
customers,  the  other  girls  do  not  report  them." 

He  stopped  again,  and  this  time  Katie  answered: 

"  I  suppose  they  boss  their  own  lives  in  their  own 
way,  Mr.  Porter." 

A  faint  spark  of  color  shone  in  Mr.  Porter's  white 
cheek. 

"  I  suppose  they  do,"  he  answered,  gently  pulling 
at  his  side-whiskers,  and  peeping  at  his  victim  over 
the  caressing  hand.  "  In  fact,  between  you  and  me, 
Miss  Flanagan,  I  am  told  that  some  of  them  do 
that  so  well  that  they  are  practically  independent  of 
their  wages  in  this  store." 

Again  Katie  failed  to  respond. 

"  Do  you  understand  me,  Miss  Flanagan?" 

Katie  thought  of  her  desperate  days  before  she  had 
found  her  present  employment.  She  thought  of  Her 
mann  and  what  seemed  to  be  the  sole  chance  of 
rising  to  a  salary  where  marriage  could  be  a  prac 
tical  possibility.  She  thought  of  Carrie's  plight  and 
of  Carrie's  dependence  upon  her. 

"  I  do  that,  Mr.  Porter,"  she  answered. 

He  looked  up  squarely  then,  and  she  even  man 
aged  to  torture  her  face  into  an  expression  of 
roguery. 

"  Ah,"  said  Mr.  Porter,  smiling  a  paternal  smile. 


3i8         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

He  reached  out  and  patted  her  hand,  and,  though 
her  soul  revolted,  she  managed  to  keep  her  hand 
passive.  "  Now,  my  dear  young  lady,  you  are  at  last 
coming  to  your  senses.  You  mustn't  take  life  so 
seriously." 

"  I'll  try  not  to,  Mr.  Porter." 

"  That's  right ;  that's  right.  I  ought  to  discharge 
you,  I  know.  It  may  be  difficult  not  to  discharge  you. 
But  I  will  do  this  much :  I  will  suspend  judgment  for 
a  few  days. 

He  looked  at  her  fixedly.  Her  cold  lips  formed 
another  phrase  of  thanks. 

"  And  in  the  meantime,"  he  continued,  "  you  let 
me  know  of  some  evening  when  you  can  come  out 
to  a  quiet  corner  where  we  can  have  supper  together, 
and  where  we  won't  be  wasting  the  firm's  time.  Then 
we'll  talk  this  whole  thing  over,  and  I'll  see  what 
I  can  do." 

The  eyes  of  neither  wavered. 

"  Thank  you,  Mr.  Porter,"  said  Katie  again. 

With  that  she  left  him,  but  she  went  away  with 
the  knowledge  that  her  game  of  hide-and-seek  was 
almost  ended.  Just  when  it  would  end  was  beyond 
all  guessing,  but  that  it  would  end  soon  and  that 
it  would  end  in  her  defiance  of  her  superiors  and 
her  prompt  expulsion  seemed  altogether  certain.  She 
reflected  that  the  small  delay  which  she  had  gained 
would  profit  but  lightly  those  in  whose  interests  she 
had  attempted  to  truckle  and  palliate,  and,  when, 
that  night,  she  told  her  experience  to  Carrie,  her 
words  fell  upon  ears  that  read  into  them  a  por 
tentous  meaning. 

The    homely,    brown-haired    Lithuanian,    whose 


3*9 

cheeks  were  less  round  now  than  they  had  been, 
and  whose  hair  that  needed  no  covering  in  the 
summer,  was  still  uncovered,  went  to  her  weary 
picket-duty  in  Waverley  Place  the  next  morning — 
the  morning,  as  it  happened,  that  preceded  Her 
mann's  little  brush  with  Mirka — with  a  slow  step 
and  a  heavy  heart.  She  knew  the  futility  of  the 
work  she  was  performing;  she  saw  it  even  in  the 
relaxed  vigilance  of  the  policemen  on  the  corners 
and  in  the  mocking  grins  of  the  girls  and  toughs 
at  the  gloomy  factory-door.  All  day  as,  sometimes 
companioned  and  sometimes  alone,  she  plodded  her 
eventless  round,  the  irony  of  the  task  bit  into  her 
soul.  Something  she  must  do,  and  soon.  Already 
she  was  deep  in  Katie's  debt,  and  Katie  was  near 
dismissal. 

The  early  autumn  twilight  dropped  among  the 
grimy  buildings.  The  evening  tide  of  Broadway 
rose  and  roared  into  Waverley  Place.  A  cold  wind 
lashed  the  dust  into  little  whirlpools,  wound  the  girl's 
cheap  lawn  skirt  tightly  about  her  aching  knees,  and 
ate  through  that  thin  material  to  the  tingling  skin. 
There  was  no  one  with  her  now,  and  she  felt  more 
than  ever  alone. 

From  the  shadow  of  a  doorway  a  man  crossed 
the  street  and  approached  her. 

He  was  a  man  of  uncertain  age,  of  almost  any  age 
below  the  early  thirties.  As  he  bowed  to  her,  the 
girl  saw  that  his  hair  was  dark  and  curly;  that  the 
back  of  his  hand,  which  was  not  the  hand  of  a 
worker,  was  covered  with  a  black  down,  and  that 
through  the  pale  olive  of  his  sorely  clean-shaven 
cheeks  there  shone  the  blue-black  banners  of  a  wiry 


320        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

beard  fighting  for  freedom.  His  lips  were  thick 
until  they  smiled,  above  white  teeth,  in  greeting,  and 
his  gray  glance  had  the  character  of  an  appraisement 
of  whatever  it  looked  upon.  Carrie  noticed,  pro 
truding  from  his  breast-coatpocket,  a  purple  bor 
dered  handkerchief. 

"  Hello,"  he  said. 

She  looked  at  him  gravely.  She  had  never  seen 
him  before,  but  with  his  kind  she  had  lately  grown 
enough  familiar.  Wherever  there  are  women  on 
strike,  men  of  his  sort  gather,  as  the  vultures  gather 
about  dying  animals  in  a  jungle.  Yet  Carrie  said 
nothing.  She  was,  as  she  had  expressed  it  to  Katie, 
still  wondering. 

"  I've  been  vatcliiri1  you,"  said  the  man.  "  I've 
been  vatchin'  you  all  tay" 

"  Have  you  ?  "     Carrie  was  totally  incurious. 

"  Yes,  I'd  think  you'd  be  pretty  tired  of  sooch 
/oo/ishness." 

"  I  am  tired." 

"  You  can't  vin.  If  you  go  back  it  will  be  choost 
the  same  hell-mill  it  vas  before." 

"  I  suppose  it  would." 

"  Veil  then  " — his  hands  spread  themselves  in  pro 
test — "  vhy  don't  you  qvlt?  A  pretty,  strong  girl 
like  you  could  make  loads  of  money  fer  herself." 

Carrie  was  leaning  against  the  factory  wall.  She 
did  not  move. 

"How?"  she  asked. 

"  Veil,  you  hafn't  got  no  odder  trade,  eh?  " 

"  No." 

"  Und  you  vouldn't  vant  to  be  a  servant?  " 

"Why  not?" 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         321 

"  Because  that's  vorse  nor  a  5/nY/vaist-factory." 

"  Then  I  wouldn't  want  to  be  a  servant." 

Again  the  man  extended  his  hands. 

"Veil?"  he  said. 

"  But  I  knew  one  girl  that  went  into  a  house," 
affirmed  Carrie,  "  and  I  wouldn't  do  that  for  a  for 
tune." 

Her  practical  manner  might  have  disconcerted 
most  men,  but  this  man's  business  had  accustomed 
him  to  all  forms  of  rejoinder.  He  immediately  be 
gan  an  endeavor  to  persuade  her  by  economic  argu 
ments. 

But  Carrie  interrupted  him. 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  if  I  do  it,  it  will  be  only  because 
I  have  to,  and  then  I'll  not  do  it  that  way.  Thank 
you,  just  the  same.  Here  comes  my  relief:  I  don't 
have  to  wait  till  the  girls  come  out  to-day.  Good- 
by." 

He  essayed  to  protest,  but  she  walked  quietly  by 
him,  made  her  brief  report  to  the  oncoming  women, 
and  started  on  her  journey  homeward.  The  man, 
whose  trade  imposed  patience,  said  no  more.  He  did 
not  again  approach  her,  and,  though  she  knew  that 
he  was  following  her,  through  the  growing  crowd 
that  rolled  eastward,  to  mark  her  hiding-place,  she 
did  not  attempt  to  elude  him.  She  was  very  tired. 

This  was  the  evening  that  preceded  the  early 
morning  call  of  Angel  the  Italian  and  Mirka  the 
Austrian  to  Ludwig  Schleger's  saloon,  and  it  was 
about  eight  hours  later  that  Hermann,  having  seen 
his  assailants  leave,  turned  his  back  to  the  bar-room 
door  and,  alone  in  the  place,  set  about  washing  the 
discarded  glasses.  Except  that  he  was  sleepy,  he 


322         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

was  in  his  usual  spirits  and  he  was  whistling  "  Die 
Wacht  Am  Rhein."  He  was  whistling  so  loudly 
that  he  did  not  hear  the  door  reopen. 

There  was  a  flash  as  of  a  thousand  blinding  lights, 
a  roar  as  if  a  train  had  fallen  from  the  elevated  road 
overhead,  and  Hermann,  in  the  smoke-filled  saloon, 
himself  fell  crashing  behind  the  bar,  and  lay  there, 
huddled  and  still. 

Mirka  quietly  reclosed  the  door  and  darted 
around  the  corner. 


XXII 

THE  SERPENTS'  DEN 

POVERTY,  which  produces  the  slave,  breeds, 
just  as  surely,  the  slaver.     Take  where  you 
will  the  trail  of  the  trafficker  in  women,  this 
rule  is  proven.     It  is  proven  in  puritan  Boston  and 
protected  New  Orleans,   in  Chicago  and  Washing 
ton,  in  Philadelphia  and  San  Francisco,  and  on  the 
heroic  scale  it  is  nowhere  more  plainly  proven  than 
in  the  heroic  city  of  New  York. 

On  Manhattan  Island  is,  indeed,  the  Mother- 
Church,  however  unconsciously  organized,  of  the 
black  faith',  and  though,  of  necessity,  there  spon 
taneously  arise  elsewhere  congregations  that  reach 
back  to  her,  here  is  founded  and  established  the 
Congregation  of  the  Propaganda  that  reaches  out  to 
them.  Its  missionaries — its  women,  men,  and 
methods — have  stretched  to  Nome  and  the  Canal 
Zone;  they  are  preaching  their  own  brand  of  dogma 
against  the  native  versions  of  Buenos  Ayres  and  Syd 
ney,  of  Shanghai  and  Cape  Town;  and  within  its 
home  city  the  hierarchy  is  entrenched  by  financial 
strength,  political  power,  and  legal  negligence.  As 
an  industry,  it  has  its  wholesalers  and  retailers;  or, 
as  a  church,  its  bishops  sit  in  their  national  house  of 
peers,  while  its  younger  orders,  its  proselyting 
priests  and  evangelizing  deacons,  perform  their 


324         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

especial  tasks,  the  young  appealing  to  the  young,  the 
poor  preying  upon  poverty. 

The  entrance  to  these  lower  orders  lies,  as  in 
most  orders  and  most  businesses,  through  a  period 
of  probation:  the  lad  of  sixteen  plays  the  role  of 
watchdog  and  spy  for  his  superiors,  for  which  he 
earns  an  occasional  fifty-cent  piece,  or  a  casual  kettle 
of  beer,  vastly  increasing  his  income  if  he  now  and 
then  diverts,  as  he  generally  does,  his  energies  to 
the  occupation  of  amateur  theft.  From  this  stage 
he  is  admitted,  by  his  own  efforts,  to  the  possession 
of  one  girl,  whom  he  bullies  into  working  for  him 
along  the  streets.  He  may  occasionally  deign  to 
appear  as  a  waiter  in  a  cafe,  and  offer  his  woman 
to  its  drunken  habitues;  but  most  frequently  he  scorns 
all  menial  labor,  for  which,  in  fact,  conditions  have 
utterly  unfitted  him.  Sometimes  he  increases  his 
slave-holdings  to  a  trio  of  women,  and  even  farms 
out  his  victims  to  friends  in  his  own  or  other  neigh 
borhoods  or  towns:  more  often  he  delivers  his  hu 
man  wares  to  the  proprietors  of  houses  intended  for 
their  reception,  being  paid  in  a  lump  sum,  or  on  a 
royalty  basis;  but  in  either  case  his  ambition  is, 
naturally,  to  rise  to  the  position  of  the  large  prop 
erty-holder  or  the  political  receiver  of  tribute.  If 
he  is  an  Italian,  common  consent  limits  his  operations 
to  the  southern  end  of  the  Bowery;  if  he  is  a  Jew, 
his  field  lies  about  the  Houston  and  Essex  Streets 
districts;  whatever  his  European  parentage,  he  seeks 
his  fellow-countrywomen,  and  if  he  is  American  born 
he  has  the  freedom  of  Broadway. 

His  means  are  multitude.  Wherever  there  is 
squalor  seeking  ease,  he  is  there.  \Vherever  there 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         325 

is  distress  crying  for  succor,  discontent  complaining 
for  relief,  weariness  sighing  for  rest,  there  is  this 
missionary,  this  "  cadet,"  offering  the  quack  salva 
tion  of  his  temporal  church.  He  knows  and  takes 
subtle  advantage  of  the  Jewish  sisters  sent  to  work 
for  the  education  of  Jewish  brothers;  the  Irish,  the 
Germans,  the  Russians,  and  the  Syrians  ground  in 
one  or  another  economic  mill;  the  restless  neurotic 
native-daughters  untrained  for  work  and  spoiled  for 
play.  He  is  at  the  door  of  the  factory  when  it  re 
leases  its  white-faced  women  for  a  breath  of  night 
air;  he  is  at  the  cheap  lunch-room  where  the  stenogra 
phers  bolt  unwholesome  noonday  food  handed  about 
by  underpaid  waitresses;  he  lurks  around  the  corner 
for  the  servant  and  the  shop-clerk.  He  remembers 
that  these  are  girls  too  tired  to  do  household  work 
in  their  evenings,  too  untaught  to  find  continued 
solace  in  books;  that  they  must  go  out,  that  they 
must  move  about;  and  so  he  passes  his  own  nights 
at  the  restaurants  and  theaters,  the  moving-picture 
shows,  the  dancing  academies,  the  dance-halls.  He 
may  go  into  those  stifling  rooms  where  immigrants, 
long  before  they  learn  to  make  a  half-complete  sen 
tence  of  what  they  call  the  American  language,  learn 
what  they  are  told  are  American  dances :  the  whirling 
"  spiel  "  with  blowing  skirts,  the  "  half-time  waltz  " 
with  jerking  hips.  He  may  frequent  the  more  so 
phisticated  forms  of  these  places,  may  even  be  seen 
in  the  more  expensive  cafes,  or  may  journey  into  the 
provinces.  But  he  scents  poverty  from  afar. 

Where  training  is  as  yet  too  strong  or  distress 
too  weak  to  make  serve  the  offer  of  partnership,  the 
promise  of  marriage  usually  suffices.  The  thing  is 


326        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

done,  and  once  done,  blows  and  starvation  perpetuate 
it  with  the  ignorant,  and  threats  of  exposure  and 
public  shame  rivet  the  shackles  on  the  more  knowing. 
The  former  suffer  for  their  darkness;  the  latter  are 
held  the  faster  in  proportion  to  their  previous  re 
spectability. 

One  has  said  that  this  church  is  established;  in 
every  city  it  maintains  its  incestuous  marriage  to  the 
state.  It  controls  real  votes  by  the  thousands  and 
provides  false  ones  by  the  tens  of  thousands.  It  is 
a  church  that  may  be  considered  to  exercise  the  old 
ecclesiastical  right  of  trying  its  own  offenders  in  its 
own  courts.  When  the  magistrates  have  not  begun 
as  slavers,  when  they  own  no  poor,  but  highly  rented, 
houses,  leased  for  prostitution,  when  they  do  not 
even  accept  tithes  from  the  traffic,  it  is  still  largely 
the  traffic  that  elects  and  can  defeat  them.  What  the 
Black  Church  owes  to  the  political  powers  for  their 
protection,  the  political  powers  owe  to  the  church  for 
its  ballots. 

It  was  this  condition  that  made  possible  the  im 
punity  of  such  a  deed  as  the  Austrian  Mirka  had  done 
upon  Hermann  Hoffmann,  the  bar-keeper ;  that  made 
certain  the  assailant's  escape,  and  that  made  of  the 
entire  matter  merely  a  question  as  to  which  of  sev 
eral  handy  means  should  be  employed  to  free  the 
slaver  in  the  eyes  of  the  law.  About  those  means 
there  had,  however,  been  some  debate,  and  so  it 
befell  that,  early  on  the  Sunday  evening  following 
the  shooting,  Rafael  Angelelli  sat  in  a  recognized 
New  York  meeting-place  of  the  church's  proselyting 
order,  engaged  in  pleasant  converse  with  Wesley 
Dyker,  candidate  for  a  magistracy.  This  place  was 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         327 

the  back-room  of  a  saloon.  It  was  filled  with  ciga 
rette-smoking  young  missionaries,  who  talked  shop, 
and  quoted  prices,  and  discussed  the  prospects  of  a 
good  season  in  precisely  the  businesslike  way  that 
men  in  a  livestock-dealers'  club  talk  shop,  and  quote 
prices,  and  discuss  the  prospects  of  a  good  season. 
Dyker  had  not  at  all  wanted  to  come  there,  but 
O'Malley  had  ordered,  and  so,  making  peace  with 
the  tolerant  Angelelli,  he  had  been  forced  to  obey. 
A  special  counsel  for  the  sheriff  of  New  York  had 
once  been  a  member  of  the  legal  corps  of  the  mis 
sionaries  and  so  had  two  State  Senators :  O'Malley, 
remembering  Dyker's  previous  career,  could  see  no 
reason  for  present  pride. 

The  room  was  clouded  with  smoke.  Waiters  hur 
ried  about  serving  beer  from  brass  platters  and  swab 
bing  the  small  tables  with  damp  rags.  There  was 
a  buzz  of  conversation  broken  by  that  peculiar  form 
of  laughter  which  responds  only  to  obscenities,  and 
now  and  then,  out  of  the  general  clamor,  there  arose 
oaths  almost  technical,  descriptions  of  women  that 
sounded  like  auctioneers'  announcements  in  a  horse- 
market,  and  fragments  of  stories  in  which  the  teller 
bragged  of  a  sharp  deal  he  had  effected  in  capturing 
a  slave  or  in  bargaining  with  a  proprietress. 

"  I  understand,"  said  Dyker,  with  his  eyelids  char 
acteristically  lowered,  "  that  you  want  to  see  me  in 
regard  to  something  about  this  shooting-affair  of 
your  friend  Mirka." 

Angel's  oily  head  bobbed  a  ready  assent. 

"  Where's  the  fellow  that  was  hurt?  " 

"  In  Bellevue." 

"  Is  he  going  to  die?  " 


328         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Naw ;  eet  was  only  a  leetle  one  in  hees  shoulder." 

"  Anybody  else  in  the  bar  when  it  happened?  " 

"  Naw." 

That  was  better.    Wesley  took  a  sip  of  beer. 

"  Mirka  was  alone,  too?" 

"  Yas." 

"  Did  the  bar-keeper  see  him?" 

"Naw;  hees  back  was  rounda  to  da  door." 

"  There'd  been  a  quarrel  beforehand,  though?" 

"  Ah,  some  small  word  only." 

"  And  nobody  saw  Mirka  come  back  or  leave  the 
place  the  second  time?" 

Nobody  had  seen  him. 

Then  how  was  it  that  the  injured  man,  in  the 
hospital,  had  said  that  Mirka  had  done  the  shoot 
ing? 

Angel  explained  that  Hermann  based  his  accusa 
tion  partly  on  an  uncertain  and  partial  glimpse  of 
Mirka  caught  in  the  bar-mirror  at  the  instant  that 
the  shot  was  fired,  but  largely  on  the  preceding 
quarrel. 

"  This  Hoffmann  couldn't  swear  to  Mirka's  iden 
tity  from  that  mere  glimpse?" 

The  Italian  thought  not. 

"  Well,  then,"  said  Wesley,  "  it  all  ought  to  be 
easy  enough.  Every  bar-keeper  knows  a  lot  of 
drunks  that  might  want  to  hurt  him." 

Rafael  shrugged. 

"  You  can  feex  eet,"  he  said.  "  Meest'  O'Malley 
say  you  feex  eet  easy." 

"  But,"  replied  Dyker,  "  I  don't  see  how  I  can 
act  as  Mirka's  lawyer,  unless  it  is  all  done  quickly. 
You  know,  I'm  about  to  be  elected  magistrate." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         329 

"Poof!"   said  Angel,   blowing  a   thin  spiral   of 
blue  cigarette-smoke.     "  We  gotta  da  lawyer." 

"  Oh !  "  Dyker  looked  up  quickly,  and  quickly 
down  again.  "  Then  you  want  me — I  see." 

"  Good." 

The  prospective  magistrate  began  making  rings 
on  the  table  with  his  wet  glass. 

"  But  I  should  think  there  were  other  ways.  The 
man  hasn't  been  arrested  yet?  " 

"  Naw." 

"Then  why  need  the  police  find  him?" 

"  Thees  O'Malley  say  eet  looka  better." 

"  He  might  jump  his  bail." 

"  Naw." 

"  It's  often  done  that  way." 

"  O'Malley  say  '  naw'." 

"  Or  he  might  go  up  for  trial.  There's  no  real 
evidence  against  him:  nobody  saw  the  shot  fired. 
And  besides,  even  if  we  couldn't  fix  things  in  court, 
which  is  always  easy  enough,  we  could  get  him  a 
pardon  as  we  did  for  Pud  Morley  or  Frank  Da 
Silva." 

But  Angel  would  have  none  of  these  propositions. 
Michael  O'Malley  was,  it  seemed,  inexorable. 
There  had  been  enough  bail-jumping,  queer  verdicts, 
and  pardons  for  a  few  months.  The  case  must 
come  before  the  new  magistrate,  and  the  new 
magistrate  must  declare  that  the  testimony  was 
not  sufficient  to  warrant  holding  the  prisoner  for 
court. 

"Where  is  Mirka  now?"  asked  Dyker. 

"  Een  Philadelph',"  said  Angel. 

"Loafing?" 


330         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Naw.  He  tooka  one  of  heesa  girls  along.  I 
am  takin'  care  of  dees  other  one." 

"  Can't  we  get  hold  of  the  Dutchman  and  make 
him  see  who's  back  of  all  this?  " 

"Naw;  dees  Dutch'  ees  a  fool." 

"  Won't  even  be  bought?  " 

11  Naw." 

"And  can't  be  scared?" 

"Naw;  I  tell  you  dees  Dutch'  ees  a  damn  fool." 

-  Wesley  did  not  like  the  plan ;  he  did  not  like  it  at 

all;  but  he  was  already  harnessed  fast,  and  he  had 

learned  that  it  was  best  to  follow  without  protest  the 

directing  rein.     He  achieved  a  smile. 

"  All  right,"  he  agreed. 

The  Italian's  face  lighted  with  gratification. 

"You  do  eet?"  he  asked. 

"  I'll  arrange  it ;  don't  worry." 

"Good!    Good!    That's  good!" 

Angel's  pleasure  was  so  pronounced  that  Dyker 
for  a  moment  feared — though  it  would  have  made 
small  difference — lest  the  cadet  make  to  the  entire 
company  a  public  announcement  of  his  promise.  He 
need  not,  however,  have  worried.  Rafael  was  wholly 
used  to  these  legal  fictions  and  to  the  etiquette  that 
imposed  their  formal  observance;  his  delight  took 
the  shape  of  an  order  for  another  pair  of  drinks, 
and,  those  dispatched,  he  leisurely  got  upon  his  little 
feet. 

"  Now,"  said  he,  "  I  go.     I  hava  da  businesses." 

He  smiled  wisely  at  the  concluding  word. 

Wesley  also  rose. 

"  I'll  have  to  be  getting  along  myself,"  he  re 
marked. 


"  Ah,  but  you  can  stay  eef  you  feel  like,"  said 
Angel.  "  I  maka  you  know  deesa  mens." 

"  Thanks.  I  do  know  most  of  them,"  replied 
Dyker,  nodding  to  two  or  three  of  the  nearby  cadets 
as  he  spoke.  "  But  I  have  some  business,  too.  These 
are  busy  times  with  me." 

They  both  made  their  way  to  the  saloon's  side 
door. 

"  Coin'  so  soon?  "  chorused  some  of  the  habitues 
as  Angel  moved  among  them. 

He  nodded,  smiling  cheerfully. 

"  Coin'  to  kop  out  a  new  skirt?  "  inquired  one. 

"  Yas,"  responded  Rafael,  now  with  a  frank, 
satisfied  chuckle. 

"Then  here's  luck!  "  cried  another. 

As  the  health  was  being  drunk,  Dyker  passed 
through  the  door  and  turned,  alone,  into  the  cool 
night  air  of  the  street. 

Notwithstanding  his  natural  bias,  his  severe 
schooling,  and  his  honestly  cynical  and  cynically  lim 
ited  view  of  this  portion  of  his  little  world,  he  was 
ashamed  of  what  he  had  just  seen  and  heard  and 
done,  and  he  was  disgusted.  He  walked  down  the 
avenue  in  the  deepened  shadows,  for  the  first  time 
in  a  long  while  more  than  half  inclined  to  ask  him 
self  whether  what  he  was  to  get  was  worth  the  price 
that  he  had  already  begun  to  pay  for  it;  and  for 
the  first  time,  by  way  of  answer,  frankly  facing  the 
fact  that  the  position  of  a  corrupt  magistrate  was  not 
much  worse  than  that  of  a  corrupt  lawyer,  and  that 
neither  position  was  much  worse,  and  both  certainly 
better  paid,  than  the  position  in  which  his  task  had 
been  to  render  anonymous  assistance  to  the  no  less 


332         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

dubious  course  of  more  esteemed  corporation  attor 
neys. 

He  was  too  occupied  with  these  reflections,  dis 
quieting  and  consolatory,  to  observe  well  the  persons 
that  passed  him.  He  continued  his  way  along  the 
curb  rather  because  he  had  started  upon  it  than 
because  he  at  all  cared  about  whither  it  led  him, 
much  as  he  was  continuing  his  progress  in  the  politi 
cal  maze  in  which  his  lot  was  cast.  He  kept  his 
head  bent,  and  so  he  did  not  see  a  pale-faced,  large- 
eyed  woman  that,  turning  a  hasty  corner,  almost  col 
lided  with  him  and  then  suddenly  drew  back  and 
crossed  the  street. 

There  were  changes  in  the  woman's  face,  which 
might  have  precluded  recognition.  He  had  last 
seen  her  on  the  eve  of  a  surgical  operation  and  she 
had  looked  ill,  but  now,  the  cumulative  effect  of  that 
and  many  other  crises  sat  upon  her,  and  it  was  only 
in  her  habitual  gait,  the  swaying  languid  pace  of 
an  unstudied  young  animal,  that  he  might  have  found 
enough  to  recall  her  to  his  memory.  But  Dyker's 
eyes  were  directed  inward  and  so,  when  she  turned 
aside  to  avoid  the  man  that  she  fancied  she  had 
wronged,  he  did  not  realize  that  he  had 
almost  touched  elbows  with  the  woman  he  had 
once  rescued,  fresh  from  her  dismissal  from  the 
sacred  precincts  of  Mrs.  Ferdinand  Chamberlin's 
home. 

She  had  started  away  from  Washington  Square  in 
the  same  dull  pain  in  which  she  had  previously  left 
the  Ninth  Street  boarding-house  presided  over  by 
the  stony-breasted  Mrs.  Alberta  Turner;  she  had 
been  only  a  wounded  dog,  whose  sole  desire  was  to 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         333 

find  a  dark  corner  in  which  she  could  suffer  un 
observed;  but  slowly  there  reasserted  itself  in  her 
torpid  brain  that  new  impulse  toward  a  questioning 
of  life  which  had  so  appalled  Philip  Beekman.  The 
whole  she  could  not  see;  her  own  case  bulked  so  far 
in  the  foreground  that  little  else  of  the  picture  was 
visible  to  her.  But  she  knew  that  an  ill-constructed 
world  was  against  her;  she  concluded  that  all  legiti 
mate  doors  were  closed  upon  her,  and  she  felt 
gradually  kindling  a  wrath  that  would  end  in  gen 
eral  reprisal. 

How  she  chanced  into  Rivington  Street  she  did 
not  know.  She  had  no  clear  idea  as  to  where  she 
was  to  go,  except  that  she  must  not  return 
to  burden  Katie  Flanagan.  Yet,  almost  before  she 
was  clearly  conscious  of  her  whereabouts,  she  found 
herself  accosted  by  a  voice  that  proved  to  come  from 
the  lips  of  Marian  Lennox. 

"Mary  Morton!  How  do  you  do?  Where  are 
you  going?  Where  on  earth  have  you  been?  Come 
in  here;  I'm  just  getting  back  from  a  walk.  I  am 
so  anxious  to  hear  how  you  are  getting  on,  and  I 
have  been  so  disappointed  because  you  never  let  me 
hear  from  you." 

The  rivulet  of  cheerful  words  poured  from  the 
calm-faced  woman  with  unheeding  force.  Each  one 
of  them  fell  upon  her  auditor  with  an  unintended 
shock.  Mary,  who  had  almost  forgotten  the  pseudo 
nym  under  which  she  had  been  presented  at  the 
Settlement,  could  say  nothing.  She  was  carried  up 
the  steps  and  into  the  house,  up  the  stairs  and  into 
the  deserted  sitting-room  on  the  second  floor;  and 
there  she  sank  limply  into  a  wicker  chair  beside  a 


334         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

magazine-littered  table,  tete-a-tete  with  her  former 
benefactress. 

Marian,  all  good  intentions,  rested  her  delicate 
chin  upon  her  white  hands. 

"  Now,"  she  said,  "  I  am  anxious  to  hear  all  about 
you." 

Mary,  with  a  perplexed  frown,  looked  hard  at 
the  floor. 

"  Why,  there  isn't  much  to  tell,  Miss  Lennox," 
she  replied. 

"  Nonsense.  Of  course  there  is,  my  dear.  You 
must  understand  that  I  am  interested  in  everything 
about  you — in  everything." 

Mary's  eyes  sought,  for  a  moment,  the  pure, 
cameo-like  face.  They  could  see  no  evil  there,  and 
they  could  see  much  kindliness. 

"  Well,  then,"  she  hesitated,  "  I  don't  know  ex- 
^ctly  where  to  begin." 

"  At  the  beginning,  of  course.  How  do  you  like 
your  place?  " 

"Which  place,  Miss  Lennox?" 

"  The  place  we  sent  you  to." 

"  I'm  not  there  no  more." 

"  Not  there?  "  Marian  raised  her  perfectly  arched 
brows.  "But,  my  dear  Mary,  why  not?  Didn't 
you  like  it?" 

"  I  didn't  mind." 

"  Then  you  have  found  a  better  place  ?  " 

Again  Mary  studied  her  questioner. 

"  Miss  Lennox,"  she  said,  "  I  guess  you  people 
here  have  all  sorts  of  girls  comin'  around,  don't 
you?" 

There    was    a    surprise    in    this    departure,    and 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         335 

Marian's  deep  eyes  mirrored  it.  The  questioner  had 
become  the  questioned. 

"  A  great  many  kinds,"  she  replied.  "  Why  do 
you  ask?  " 

"  Girls  that  work  at  all  sorts  of  things?  " 

"  To  be  sure." 

"  And  you  want  to  help  'em?  " 

"  We  try  to  help  them  all." 

"  Yes;  I  thought  so.  Can  you  help  'em  all,  Miss 
Lennox?  " 

"  When  they  let  us,  I  think  we  can." 

"  Then  what  do  you  do  about  them  that  hasn't 
been  straight?  " 

Marian  softly  caught  her  breath. 

"  Oh,"  she  said;  "  I "  She  had  learned,  since 

their  last  meeting,  a  little  about  the  girls  concerning 
whom  Mary  was  inquiring,  and  she  had  learned 
much  regarding  the  Settlement's  attitude  toward 
them;  but  she  had  learned,  also,  that  the  work  of  the 
place  most  lay  with  the  flowers  that  bloomed  among 
the  weeds,  and  so,  "  Well,  you  see,"  she  lamely  con 
tinued,  "  Well,  we  do  the  best  we  can." 

"What's  that,  please,  Miss  Lennox?  I've  got  a 
particular  reason  for  wanting  to  know." 

Marian  understood.  She  spoke  softly,  and  softly 
laced  and  interlaced  her  long  white  fingers,  resting 
in  her  lap. 

"  We  do  the  best  we  can,  Mary,"  she  repeated, 
more  confidently.  "  When  we  have  investigated  the 
case  and  are  sure  such  a  girl  is  sorry,  or  wasn't  en 
tirely  to  blame,  and  that  she  means  to  do  what  is 
right  in  the  future,  we  make  her  our  personal  friend. 
We  encourage  her  to  come  here  and  talk  to  us  and 


336         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

get  all  the  help  possible.  We  have  her  around  to  all 
the  entertainments " 

"  Can  she  learn?  "  asked  Mary. 

"Learn?"     Marian's  voice  was  puzzled. 

"  Can  she  go  to  the  clubs  and  the  classes  they 
talked  about  when  I  was  here  first?"  explained 
Mary. 

Marian  shook  a  doubtful  head. 

"  You  see  that  wouldn't  do,  right  away,  Mary," 
she  said.  "  We  have  to  think  of  the  other  girls,  and 
we  have  to  protect  the  girls  that  are  straight  as  well 
as  help  those  that  haven't  been.  These  are  their 
clubs,  after  all,  and  they  wouldn't  like  it,  if  they 
knew.  It  wouldn't  be  just  for  us  to  deceive  them, 
and  they  have  the  first  claim  on  our  protection." 

"Why?" 

It  was  the  hardest  question  that  Marian  Lennox 
had  ever  had  put  to  her.  She  tried  to  form  an 
answer,  but  though  she  could  think  of  many  that 
seemed  to  her  logical,  she  could  think  of  none  that 
seemed  kind.  Sympathy  sprang  to  her  eyes.  She 
put  out  her  hands. 

"  Mary!  "  she  said. 

But  Mary  had  received  her  reply. 

"  It  don't  matter,  Miss  Lennox,"  she  said,  and 
she  said  it  so  calmly  and  so  coldly  that  Marian  in 
voluntarily  drew  back  in  her  chair.  "  I  just  won 
dered,  that  was  all." 

She  stopped  an  instant.  Her  hostess  tried  to  speak 
and  could  not,  but  presently  the  girl  pursued: 

"  I  wasn't  square  with  you,  that  night  you  gave 
me  the  recommedation  to  Mrs.  Turner,  Miss  Len 
nox.  I  suppose  I  ought  to've  told  you  all  about  my- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         337 

self,  but  I  had  to  get  work,  an'  I  knew  if  I  told  you 
I  wouldn't  get  no  job.  I'd  been — I'd  been  in  a 
house.  I  wanted  to  get  away,  an'  a  man  had 
just  got  me  out  a  little  more'n  a  month  or  so 
before." 

"  It  was  not  exactly  honest  of  you,"  said  Marian. 

She  was  sorry  as  soon  as  she  had  spoken,  but 
Mary,  showing  no  sign  of  hurt  or  resentment,  was 
continuing  before  reparation  or  explanation  could  be 
made. 

Very  simply  she  told  the  hard  outward  facts  of 
her  story.  She  did  not  give  the  history  of  her  cap 
ture,  because  her  experience  with  Mrs.  Turner,  with 
the  homely  little  woman  that  had  called  at  the  em 
ployment-agency,  and  with  Philip  Beekman  had 
shown  her  that  this  could  not  lessen  the  extent  of  fier 
contamination.  Honestly  rejecting  her  deception  of 
Marian,  goaded  by  that  glimpse  of  Wesley  Dyker 
into  an  impulse  to  make,  at  any  cost  to  herself,  the 
amend  of  truth  for  what  fault  she  had  committed, 
she  was  still  more  powerfully  moved  by  a  determina 
tion  to  accept  without  reservation  the  part  that  the 
world  had  now  assigned  her,  and  to  fight  under  no 
colors  save  her  own. 

Marian,  her  fine  face  drawn  with  pain,  heard  the 
narrative  in  a  silence  broken  only  when  Mary  had 
concluded  with  her  departure  from  the  hospital. 
The  girl  had  mentioned  no  names. 

"  And  even  this  one  man,"  murmured  Marian  at 
last,  "  even  this  man  who  had  the  courage  to  rescue 
you — even  he  was  a  visitor  at  such  a  place?  " 

"  Why,  of  course,"  said  Mary,  as  yet  unused  to 
the  idea  of  any  blame  attaching  to  the  mere  male 


338         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

patronage  of  slavery.  "  How  else  could  I  have  got 
him  for  help?" 

"  But  you  said  he  was  in  love  with  that  woman 
who  conducted  the — house." 

"With  Miss  Rose?" 

"What  did  you  call  her?" 

"  Mrs.  Rose  Legere  she  called  herself,  but  I  guess 
that  wasn't  her  name.  Yes,  he  was  kind  of  in  love 
with  her.  He  was  one  of  her  favorites  anyhow,  but 
that  was  just  because  he  had  a  pull  with  the  politi 
cians,  you  see.  She  let  him  love  her  so's  she  could 
work  him,  an'  when  I  put  him  wise  to  that,  he  was 
glad  to  help  me." 

Marian  clinched  her  fist. 

"The  abominable  cur!  "  she  said. 

"  Oh,  no !  Not  that,"  protested  Mary.  She  had 
failed  this  man  by  retracting  her  affidavit,  but  she 
meant  to  be  loyal  to  him  wheresoever  she  could.  His 
name  slipped  from  her  with  no  thought  of  conse 
quences.  "  It  took  a  lot  of  nerve  an'  goodness  to 
do  for  me  what  Mr.  Dyker  done." 

Marian's  gaze  became  fixed.  She  was  a  woman 
whose  whole  training  had  shaped  her  against  sudden 
betrayal  of  emotion,  but  she  needed  every  precept  of 
that  training  now.  She  did  not  start,  she  did  not 
flush,  but  her  hands  moved  to  the  arms  of  her  chair 
and  gripped  them  hard. 

"  Did  you  say  Mr.  Wesley  Dyker?  "  she  asked. 

Her  voice  did  not  betray  her  to  the  woman  op 
posite,  but  Mary  feared  lest  her  own  desire  to  de 
fend  her  deliverer  had  betrayed  him. 

"  That's  who  it  was,  Miss  Lennox,"  she  admitted, 
adding  anxiously:  "But  I  didn't  go  to  mention  it. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         339 

You  won't  tell  it  to  no  one  that  could  use  it  against 
him,  will  you  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no !  "  Marian  laughed  a  short,  hard  laugh 
and  rose  to  hide  whatever  might  be  seen  of  her  con 
fusion.  "  Oh,  no,"  she  said;  "I  shan't  speak  of 
this  to  any  enemy." 

Her  movement  had  seemed  to  Mary  as  a  sign 
that  the  interview  was  ending,  but  the  laughter 
chilled  her.  She  also  rose,  and  stood  before  her  host 
ess. 

"You  don't  know  him?"  she  tremulously  in 
quired. 

"  I  think,"  said  Marian,  "  that  I  used  to  know 
somebody  by  some  such  name,  but  I  do  not  know  him 
now.  He  need  not  disturb  himself,  and  when  you 
see  him  you  need  not  disturb  him  by  saying  that  you 
spoke  of  this  to  me." 

"  Oh,  I  won't  see  him,"  Mary  assured  her.  "  It 
ain't  likely  I'll  ever  see  see  him  again." 

Marian's  eyes  searched  her,  but  they  detected 
nothing  disingenuous. 

"You  have  quarreled?"  she  demanded. 

"  No,  only  he  wanted  me  to  testify  against  Miss 
Rose,  an'  I  was  too  scared.  I  just  hid  myself." 

There  was  a  simple  appeal  in  the  bare  words  that 
brought  their  hearer  to  her  better  self.  Within  her 
there  burned  a  new  and  mounting  fire,  but  her  face 
was  cool  and  her  actions  were  reasoned. 

"  Mary,"  she  said,  determined  to  sink  herself  and 
to  be  true  to  her  code,  "  I  am  very  sorry  to  have 
heard  all  this.  I  am  sorry  that  I  seemed  harsh  when 
I  said  you  had  not  been  quite  honest  with  us." 

"  But  I  hadn't  been,  Miss  Lennox." 


340         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  It  was  not  altogether  your  fault  if  you  weren't, 
Mary.  I  begin  to  see  that  it  must  be  rather  hard, 
sometimes,  to  be  quite  honest." 

"  It  is,  sometimes." 

"  But  you  have  been  honest  now  with  me,  and 
I  want  to  help  you.  I  want  you  to  come  around 
here  in  the  way  I  described.  I  want  you  to  come 
often." 

She  paused,  and  then,  as  Mary  did  not  respond, 
she  added: 

"Will  you?" 

Mary's  eyes  were  on  the  floor. 

"  Do  you  think  you  can  get  me  a  job  ?  "  she  asked. 
"  Do  you  think  anyone  can?  " 

Marian  had  thought  nothing  about  it. 

"  Why,  really,  I  don't  know,  Mary.  But  I  sup 
pose  so.  Anyhow,  I'll  see  what  I  can  do — though 
of  course  I  shouldn't  feel  justified  in  procuring  you 
a  position  under  false  pretenses.  You  understand 
that?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Mary,  "  I  understand." 

"  And,  at  any  rate,  you  will  come  around  to 
morrow  ?  " 

Still  Mary  did  not  look  up. 

"  You  will  come?  "  repeated  Marian. 

"  Yes,  Miss  Lennox,"  said  Mary. 

"  Very  well,  then :  to-morrow  afternoon." 

Something  in  the  girl's  attitude  made  Marian  un 
easy.  She  insisted  on  her  point,  but  again  Mary  was 
slow  to  answer,  and  again  Marian  asked: 

"Will  you?" 

"  Yes,  Miss  Lennox." 

"  At  five  o'clock,  Mary." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         341 

"  I'll  try,   Miss  Lennox." 

"  Promise." 

Mary  stepped  to  the  door.  She  looked  up  and  put 
out  her  hand,  but,  although  Marian  saw  this,  and 
started  to  respond,  the  settlement-worker's  hand  fell 
back  to  her  side.  Mary  seemed  first  to  observe  and 
then  not  at  all  to  have  observed  it. 

"  I  promise,"  she  said  quietly,  and  left  the  room 
and  the  house. 

Inside,  Marian  was  looking  at  her  hand  as  if, 
because  it  had  refused  to  seek  that  of  the  woman 
who,  she  concluded,  had  shared  Rose  Legere's  inti 
macy  with  Dyker,  it  had  been  scorched  by  the  new 
passion  aflame  in  her  own  heart.  Outside,  Mary, 
tramping  the  evening  street,  saw,  in  her  memory  of 
that  hand  withheld,  a  hand  pointing  her  definitely 
away  from  the  keeping  of  her  promise,  pointing  her 
onward  down  the  street  as  the  place  where,  for  the 
future,  she  must  live  and  work. 


XXIII 

KATIE'S  DAY 

THE  election  came,  and  went  in  just  the  way 
that  everybody  expected  it  to  go.  Wesley 
Dyker's  political  craft,  along  with  many 
others,  was  carried  on  the  inrushing  waves  of  his 
party's  success  to  the  haven  where  he  had  desired 
it  to  rest,  and  the  prosperity  that  had  raised  the 
price  of  votes  to  five  dollars  apiece  immediately  re 
sumed  its  unostentatious  levy  upon  the  voters  against 
the  next  election.  The  defeated  candidates  forgot 
their  so  recent  denunciations  and  congratulated  their 
victorious  opponents;  the  victorious  opponents  for 
got  their  tinsel  pledges  and  resumed  the  safe  and 
sure  business  of  government  for  revenue  only,  and 
the  population  of  New  York,  like  the  population 
of  most  cities,  forgot  all  the  good  things  that  had 
been  pledged  it,  and  turned  its  energies  to  the  every 
day  task  of  taking  what  it  could  get. 

Meanwhile  Carrie  Berkowicz,  homely  and  hope 
less,  pursued,  with  a  dogged  earnestness,  the  path 
that  conditions  had  hewn  for  her,  and  always  she 
pursued  it  not  alone.  As  the  waiting  beast  prowls 
behind  the  slowly  weakening  traveler  lost  in  a  jungle, 
as  the  bird  of  prey  circles  calmly  above  the  wounded 
man  in  the  forest,  as  both  beast  and  bird  stand  by 
until  there  comes  the  moment  when  strength  can  no 
longer  oppose  them,  so,  day  after  day,  rarely  speak- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         343 

ing,  but  always  watching,  there  followed  in  this  girl's 
footsteps  the  dark  young  man  with  curling  hair  and 
shining  teeth,  who  had  accosted  her  on  Waverley 
Place.  He  seemed  to  watch  for  her  morning  en 
trance  upon  the  street,  and  to  be  the  last  to  see  her 
when  she  dragged  her  wasting  body  into  the  tene 
ment  at  night.  Much  of  the  time  he  dogged  her 
like  a  foul  shadow.  She  would  pass  him  in  a  door 
way,  she  would  see  him  lounging  at  a  corner,  she 
would  catch  glimpses  of  him  across  a  crowded  street. 
There  were  times  when  she  feared  to  look  up  lest 
she  should  have  to  answer  that  prosperous  leer  and 
ornate  bow;  there  were  others,  at  last,  when,  as  his 
well-fed  body  brushed  by  her,  she  almost  plucked 
at  his  sleeve  with  her  hungry  hands.  He  never 
stopped,  but  sometime,  she  knew,  he  would  stop;  he 
never  said  more  than  "  Good-morning  "  or  "  Good- 
evening,"  but  sometime,  sometime  soon,  he  would, 
she  knew,  say  more. 

And  meanwhile,  too,  the  politically  unaffected 
routine  of  the  Lennox  department-store  began 
gradually  to  provide  for  one  of  its  victims  at  least 
the  sense  of  approaching  variety:  Katie  Flanagan 
realized  that  the  end  of  her  usefulness — as  that 
phrase  is  termed  by  employers,  boarding-school  prin 
cipals,  and  others  in  authority — was  rapidly  nearing. 
She  managed  to  avoid  the  immaculate  Mr.  Porter 
for  one  week,  and,  but  for  her  worry  over  the  con 
dition  of  the  wounded  Hermann,  would  have  had 
moments  when  the  sport  was  amusing.  As  the  task 
master  paused  at  her  counter  one  time  during  the 
second  week,  she  achieved  a  sick  aunt,  who  sufficed 
to  account  for  her  occupied  evenings.  But  when  the 


344         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

days  and  the  nights  dragged  by  with  no  change  for 
either  the  better  or  the  worse  in  the  condition  of 
this  bed-ridden  relative,  and  when  the  girl's  inven 
tion  began  to  flag,  and  her  spirit  to  tire,  Mr.  Porter's 
glance  grew  more  and  more  searching,  his  manner 
less  and  less  warm,  and  Katie  knew  that  she  must 
soon  retreat  or  surrender. 

"  I  have  not  seen  much  of  you  lately,  Miss  Flana 
gan,"  remarked  Mr.  Porter  as,  late  one  after 
noon,  he  came  mincing  to  the  counter  where  she 
stood. 

"  I've  been  here  pretty  regular,  Mr.  Porter,"  an 
swered  Katie. 

Mr.  Porter  caressed  a  gray  side-whisker. 

"  Urn,"  said  he.  "  I  presume,  then,  that  your 
grandmother  is  no  worse." 

"  It's  me  aunt,  sir,"  rejoined  Katie,  with  the  men 
tal  addition:  "You  didn't  catch  me  that  time,  you 
ould  tom-cat."  And  she  added:  "  The  good  woman's 
some  better,  thanks." 

"  I  see,"  said  Mr.  Porter,  and,  indeed,  his  cold 
gaze  seemed  to  see  a  great  deal  more  than  he  was 
inclined  to  mention.  "  At  this  rate  of  improvement, 
I  hope  you  will  soon  find  time  to  consider  the  matter 
we  discussed  that  day  in  my  office." 

"  I  hope  that,  Mr.  Porter,"  smiled  Katie. 

"  Yes,"  concluded  Mr.  Porter,  turning  from  her 
— he  always  turned  away  when  he  was  most  signifi 
cant.  "  I  hope  so,  too,  for  I  can't  well  keep  your 
case  under  advisement  much  longer." 

Several  of  the  salesgirls  nearby  laughed  openly, 
and  Katie,  when  he  was  out  of  sight,  looked  at  them 
with  a  grimace  half  sad,  half  mocking. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         345 

The  next  morning  she  was  transferred  to  a  bar 
gain-counter  for  the  day. 

What  the  outcome  might  have  been  there  is  no 
imagining.  What  it  was  depended,  at  any  rate  in 
part,  upon  the  fact  that,  on  what  proved  to  be  her 
last  day  at  the  shop,  she  had  come  to  work  with  a 
tired  body  and  an  aching  head.  She  had  sat  up 
half  the  night  in  a  long  endeavor  to  persuade  Carrie 
to  leave  the  futile  battle  of  the  strikers  and  turn  to 
other  employment;  and,  when  Carrie  had  rejected 
all  proposals  on  the  ground  that,  though  the  fight 
was  lost,  she  knew  no  other  sort  of  work,  Katie  had 
spent  about  all  the  remainder  of  the  dark  hours  in 
an  attempt  to  convince  her  roommate  that  the  Irish 
girl's  wages  were  enough  to  support  both  of  them 
for  some  time  to  come.  The  result,  so  far  as  went 
her  conduct  at  the  store,  was  a  temper  ready  to  ex 
plode  with  the  first  spark,  and  that  spark  came  when, 
in  midafternoon,  a  nervous  woman,  who  persisted 
in  examining  everything  and  buying  nothing,  inter 
preted  Katie's  lassitude  as  indifference  and  so  re 
ported  it  to  the  floor-walker. 

Katie  was  sent  for  to  come  to  Mr.  Porter's  office. 

Mr.  Porter  looked  up  from  the  light  at  his  desk, 
and  then  down  again.  He  stroked  a  whisker. 

"  Sit  down,  Miss  Flanagan,"  he  said. 

"  Thanks,"  replied  Katie,  "  I  can  take  it  just  as 
well  standin'." 

"Take  what?"  asked  Mr.  Porter. 

"  Anythin'  at  all  you  have  to  say,"  said  Katie. 

Mr.  Porter  continued  to  look  at  his  desk  and,  by 
the  name  of  "  Miss  Flanagan,"  addressed  it  severely. 

"  Miss  Flanagan,"  he  said,  "  you  have  again  been 


346         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

reported  to  me  for  discourtesy  to  a  customer.  The 
other  case  had  not  yet  been  adjusted.  It  might  have 
been  adjusted  had  not  your  cousin " 

"  Me  aunt,"  prompted  Katie. 

"  Your  aunt,"  frowned  Mr.  Porter  to  his  desk, 
"  had  not  your  aunt  been  so  disinclined  to  recover." 

"  She  was  gettin'  absent  treatment  from  a  bad 
doctor." 

"  I  know  nothing  of  that " 

"  I  think  meself  it  was  Malicious  Animal  Mag 
netism." 

"  Please  do  not  interrupt,"  said  Mr.  Porter,  shak 
ing  his  whiskers  at  the  desk.  "  I  say  that  the  pre 
vious  case  was  not  adjusted,  though  it  might  have 
been,  if  your  mother  had  not  remained  so  ill." 

"  Me  aunt." 

"  Your  aunt,  if  you  prefer  it.  Now  comes  this 
second  case,  and  really,  I  am  curious  to  know  whether 
you  can  suggest  anything  that  will  make  me  regard 
it  with  the  smallest  degree  of  lenience." 

He  looked  again  at  the  desk,  as  if  the  desk  were 
the  case  he  had  referred  to,  but  neither  the  desk  nor 
Katie  answered. 

"  If  you  cannot,"  he  at  last  concluded,  "  I  see  no 
course  but  one  for  me  to  pursue." 

Katie  folded  her  arms  across  her  breast  and  tossed 
her  black  head. 

"  There's  only  one  thing  I  can  think  of,"  said  she, 
and  waited. 

Mr.  Porter  breathed  hard. 

"  And  what,"  he  inquired,  still  without  looking  at 
her,  "is  that?" 

Katie  took  a  soft  step  forward.     She  rested  her 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         347 

hands  upon  the  arm  of  his  desk  and  leaned  her  face 
toward  him. 

"  Don't  you  know?  "  she  asked  in  a  low  voice. 

Mr.  Porter  shot,  from  the  corner  of  his  eyes,  one 
of  his  crooked  glances  at  her. 

"  I  am  not  quite  sure,"  he  said. 

"  Then,"  replied  Katie,  "  I'll  tell  you.  The  only 
one  thing  I  can  think  of  that'd  get  you  to  let  me 
off  is  the  only  one  you  can  think  of  yourself — an' 
that's  the  one  I  won't  do!  " 

Her  voice,  which  had  begun  so  softly,  ended  in 
a  loud  note.  Her  hands,  which  had  been  open, 
clinched.  Her  body,  which  had  been  relaxed,  stif 
fened. 

Mr.  Porter  sprang  back  from  her,  looked  at  her 
with  hot  fright  in  his  usually  cool  eyes,  and  then 
shrank  as  far  away  as  his  desk-armchair  would 
permit. 

"  Miss  Flanagan,"  he  spluttered,  "  not  so  loud, 
please !  You  will  alarm  the  store." 

"  I  wish  I  could  alarm  it!  "  said  Katie. 

"  But  what — what — I   don't  understand " 

"  Yes,  you  do  understand,  all  right,  all  right,  Mr. 
Porter.  I  know  what  you  want;  I've  known  it  all 
along,  an'  if  I  hadn't  liked  to  make  a  fool  of  you, 
I'd  have  told  you  long  since  what  I  tell  you  now : 
You  won't  get  it!  " 

If  it  were  possible  for  Mr.  Porter  to  grow  whiter 
than  his  habit,  he  grew  whiter  then. 

"  I  shall — I  shall  ring  for  assistance !  "  he  pro 
tested. 

u  No  you  won't;  you  won't  dare;  you'll  sit  there, 
an'  write  me  out  a  recommendation  an'  an  order  for 


348         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

me  pay — if  your  hand  ain't  shakin'  too  much,  an' 
if  it  is,  I'll  write  it  for  you." 

And  he  did  write  it.  After  one  look  at  her,  he 
wrote  it  without  a  word,  and  "  without,"  as  Katie 
carefully  stipulated,  "  any  dockin'  for  the  last  of 
fense,"  and  as  she  left  him  she  delivered  one  Par 
thian  bolt. 

"  Remember  me  to  the  girl  you  start  after  in  the 
mornin',"  she  said;  "  an'  when  you  go  home  to-night, 
just  give  me  grandmother-mother-aunt-cousin's  best 
regards  to  your  grown-up  great-grandchildren." 

The  taste  in  which  her  revolution  expressed  itself 
may  have  been  as  doubtful  as  the  courage  that  in 
spired  it  was  certain;  but,  had  Mr.  Porter  been  able 
to  see  into  her  mind  as  she  hurried  homeward,  he 
would  have  been  gratified  at  what  he  found  there. 
The  excitement  had  gone,  and  with  it  the  bravery. 
She  had  preserved  her  individual  ideals,  but  she  now 
realized  at  what  a  cost  she  had  preserved  them. 
Against  masculine  attack  it  was  sometimes  inspiriting 
to  defend  herself,  but  to  the  slow  and  continuous 
advance  of  penury  she  well  knew  that,  at  last,  she 
must  succumb. 

She  passed  her  ugly  little  parish-church,  and,  re 
membering  that  she  had  missed  her  last  confession, 
entered  its  forbidding  doors. 

The  swinging  portal  closed  softly  behind  her.  It 
shut  out  the  glare  of  the  day,  it  shut  out  the  noises 
of  the  street,  and  it  seemed  to  shut  out  the  entire 
malicious  power  of  the  world.  Inside  the  cruel  sun 
shine  became  kindly  shade  and  comforting  candle 
light;  the  only  sound  was  the  occasional  footfall  of 
an  unseen  suppliant,  and  on  the  distant  high  altar, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         349 

shimmering  and  white  at  the  end  of  the  long  per 
spective  of  the  empty  aisle,  there  rested  the  power 
she  believed  more  powerful  than  all  on  earth  beside. 

She  made  her  confession — not  the  easy  and  for 
mal  confession  of  the  strong,  who  need  it  most,  but 
the  frank  probing  question  and  full  reply  of  the 
weak,  who  can  profit  by  it  least — and  at  its  end  she 
received  not  only  the  benediction  that  she  traced  to 
Heaven,  but  the  shrewd  advice  that  came  direct  from 
the  big  heart  of  a  worldly-wise  and  beneficent  man. 

"  Thank  you,  father,"  she  added  to  the  words 
of  the  ritual,  as  she  rose  to  go,  "  I'll  do  me  best  to 
stick  it  out,  but  times  be  when  it's  powerful 
hard." 

The  experience  had  encouraged  her,  but,  when  she 
came  at  last  into  her  barren  home,  there  fell  a  blow 
that  shook  to  its  foundations  the  structure  of  hope 
which  she  had  so  briefly  reared.  On  the  bare  table 
was  a  single  sheet  of  paper,  and  on  the  paper  was 
written : 

"  Dear  Katie : — I  have  gone  away.  There  was  no  use  in  saying 
good-by,  for  that  would  only  have  hurt  both  of  us,  and  I  could 
not  have  made  you  see  that  I  was  right  not  to  board  here  any 
longer  at  your  expense,  any  more  than  you  could  make  me  see 
last  night  that  you  were  right  on  your  side.  Pretty  soon  I'll  come 
to  see  you  and  bring  the  money  I  owe  you,  but  I  can't  ever  pay 
you  back  all  your  other  goodness,  although  I  would  give  my  right 
arm  to  do  it. 

"  Another  thing.  By  the  time  you  get  this  letter  Hermann  will 
be  to  see  you  at  the  store.  I  was  around  to  Bellevue  yesterday, 
and  we  kept  it  as  a  surprise  for  you  that  he  was  coming  out  to 
day.  I  hope  by  this  time  you  two  will  have  fixed  it  all  up;  but 
if  you  haven't,  well,  I  never  talked  to  you  about  it  much  before, 
but  I  feel  I  must  say  something  now,  because  I  seem  to  know 
more  about  life  than  I  used  to:  take  him,  Katie  dear,  for  there 
are  only  horrors  ahead  for  any  girls  like  you  and  me  if  we  don't 


350         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

marry.    He's  a  fine  man  and  you  love  him,  and  the  two  of  you 
will  do  better  together  than  you  can  do  apart. 

"  Now,  good-by.    Don't  please  bother  to  hunt  for  me — I  won't 
be  on  picket-duty  any  more,  but  /  am  all  right. 
"  Lovingly, 

"  CARRIE." 


Katie  Flanagan  put  down  the  note.  She  went  to 
the  narrow  window  and  gazed  blindly  at  the  un 
sightly  wing  of  the  tenement  across  the  narrow  court 
outside. 

"All  right?"  she  said,  the  paper  crumpling  in 
her  tightened  hand.  "All  right?  The  poor  girl's 
got  no  money  an'  no  job.  I  know  what  she's  thinkin', 
an'  there's  no  good  followin'.  '  All  right,'  she 
says!  Dear  God,  pity  her:  she  means,  'all 
wrong  M  " 

Katie  felt  too  deeply  for  her  lost  comrade  to  think 
much,  if  at  all,  of  that  portion  of  the  note  which 
touched  her  own  interest.  Her  eyes  clouded;  her 
shoulders  shook;  she  fell  upon  her  knees  before  the 
window-sill,  and  it  was  there  that  Hermann's  strong 
arms  went  about  her  neck. 

Even  then,  glad  as  she  was  to  have  him  back 
again,  she  could  do  little  but  sob  brokenly  with  her 
cheek  against  his  breast,  while  he  told  her  how  he 
had  gone  to  the  store,  learned  of  her  dismissal,  and 
come  at  once  to  the  tenement,  not  pausing  to  knock 
when  he  heard  her  sobs.  He  comforted  her  as  best 
he  could,  but  it  was  some  time  before  any  comfort 
availed. 

All  had  ended  well  for  Hermann,  but  all  had  not 
easily  so  ended.  His  wound  had  proved  relatively 
slight,  and  he  was  sound  and  whole  again:  but,  the 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         351 

day  before  his  dismissal  from  the  hospital,  Schleger 
had  waited  upon  him  shamefacedly  to  confess  that 
the  rulers  of  the  ward,  dissatisfied  with  the  bar 
keeper's  Laodicean  attitude  toward  their  political 
labors,  and  urged  by  Mirka's  friends,  had  forbidden 
his  re-engagement  in  the  saloon.  Ludwig  had  been 
sorry,  but  helpless,  and  then,  after  exacting  a  score 
of  promises,  had  disclosed  his  plan  to  open  incognito 
a  grocery-store  on  the  West  Side,  himself  remaining 
in  charge  of  the  saloon  and  Hoffmann  appearing, 
on  a  good  salary,  as  the  owner  of  the  new  venture. 

Katie  looked  up  at  him  with  eyes  shining  blue 
through  a  dispersing  mist  of  tears. 

"  An'  what  about  the  dirty  Dago  that  shot  you?  " 
she  inquired. 

Hermann  smiled  broadly.  His  face  was  thinner 
and  not  so  ruddy  as  once,  but  it  was  cheerful  still 
and  more  determined  than  of  old. 

"The  Austrian?"   he  asked. 

"  'Tis  the  same  thing,"  said  she. 

"  Ach,  veil,  I  guess  ve  von't  do  nussing  about 
him." 

"  You  won't  be  lettin'  him  go?  " 

'  Vhy  not?  Dere's  none  to  swear  fur  me  and 
a  hun'red  to  swear  fur  him.  I  kind  of  belief  Schle 
ger  gif  me  de  new  blace  as  brice  fur  keepin' 
quiet,  so  dere's  nussing  to  gain  und  efferysing  to 
lose." 

At  first  she  would  not  hear  of  it,  and  she  used 
her  opposition  to  this  dropping  of  the  charge  against 
Mirka  as  if  it  were  an  argument  properly  formed 
to  oppose  the  next  scheme  that  he  proposed  to  her. 
But  he  had  found  her  in  her  moment  of  weakness 


352         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

when  he  had  come  to  her  in  his  hour  of  strength 
renewed. 

"  No,"  he  said  firmly,  "  und  dis  evenin'  ve'll  be 
married.  I  got  der  license;  I  stopped  at  der  church; 
Father  Kelly's  vatin' — dis  evenin',  Katie." 

The  world  was  slipping  from  beneath  her  feet. 
She  did  not  answer. 

"  In  two  year',"  he  went  on,  "  one  part  of  dot 
store  ve'll  own.  Katie,  it's  our  chance;  und  in  de 
meanvhile,  if  der  Herr  Gott  sends  der  babies — und 
pray  Gott  he  vill — dey  von't  at  least  do  no  vorse 
as  ve  hof  done." 

He  drew  her  tighter,  but  she  twisted  in  his  arms 
and  got  free,  so  that  he  held  only  one  of  her  firm 
hands.  They  stood  there  face  to  face,  between  them 
the  unfathomable  chasm  of  sex,  their  feet  trembling 
at  its  brink. 

Across  the  areaway  the  straight  shafts  of  the  set 
ting  sun  caught  the  dirty  little  window-panes  of  the 
nearby  squalid  rooms  and  turned  them  to  a  shining 
glory.  The  rays  were  reflected  into  Katie's  own 
room;  they  burnished  the  cheap  paper  into  cloth  of 
gold,  they  touched  the  floor  and  gilded  it,  they  made 
of  the  rickety  table  a  thing  of  splendor,  and  of  the 
worn  chairs  fairy  thrones.  Hermann's  blonde  head 
was  crowned  with  a  halo,  and  as  he  looked  at  the 
girl,  against  the  background  of  those  yellow  win 
dows  like  a  Madonna  against  the  background  that 
the  Etruscan  painters  loved,  he  saw  in  her  eyes  what 
he  had  never  seen  before. 

In  the  momentary  struggle  the  coils  of  her  black 
hair  had  loosened  and  fallen  below  her  waist.  They 
framed  a  face  no  longer  strong  with  restraint,  hand- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         353 

some  from  the  flush  .of  battle  against  the  world,  no 
longer  set  and  self-reliant,  but  a  face  through  which 
shone  the  light  of  the  life- force,  the  motive-power 
of  the  universe,  a  beautiful  face,  white,  frightened, 
wonderful. 

"  Can — can  you  really  love  me?  " 

She  scarcely  said  the  words.  Rather  her  lips 
formed  them  with  no  voice  behind.  But  he  had 
heard  her  before  her  lips  so  much  as  moved. 

"  Ach,"  he  cried,  "  I  hof  alvays  lofed  you,  Katie, 
but  now  it  is  somesing  new  und  more.  Katie,  I  sink 
• — I  belief  sings  I  neffer  belief  before,  und  I  sink 
it  must  be  der  blessing  of  Gott  dot  I  can  see  in  yon." 

"  An'  there  won't  be  anny  other  woman?  " 

"  You  are  all  vomen,  Katie." 

She  raised  her  head. 

"  Yes,  Hermann,"  she  said,  "  I  think  I  will  be 
all  women  for  you.  I  will  be  all  you  want.  I  will 
work  an'  share,  good  luck  an'  bad.  I  never  before 
was  glad  I  knew  how  to  work,  but  now  I  will  be  all 
you  want — all,  all!  " 

He  put  her  hand  to  his  lips,  and  held  it  there  an 
instant:  Fifth  Avenue  does  these  things,  casually,  no 
better  than  the  Bowery,  when  the  Bowery  has  a  mind 
for  them. 

"  Katie,"  he  whispered. 

She  took  her  hand  away.  She  tried  to  laugh  a 
little,  but  the  laughter,  clear  and  silvery,  caught  sud 
denly  in  her  throat.  Her  mouth  twisted,  and  she 
raised  the  hand  and  put  her  lips  where  his  had  been. 

Reeling  with  the  tremor  of  that  sight,  his  arms 
recaptured  her,  and  this  time  held  her  fast.  She 
swayed  and  yielded.  Her  own  arms  answered  his, 


354        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

and  his  lips  met,  for  the  first  time  freely,  the  lips 
she  had  so  bravely  kept  for  him. 

The  case  against  Mirka  was  then  and  there  dis 
missed,  and  the  High  Court  handed  down  a  final 
decision  in  re  Hoffmann  vs.  Flanagan. 


XXIV 

MARIAN'S  WAY 

WESLEY  DYKER  looked  with  unaffected 
approval  about  the  second-story  front 
room  in  Rivington  Street.  He  saw  the 
calmly  colored  walls,  the  excellent  mats  upon  the 
floor,  the  ordered  writing-desk  and,  near  the  center, 
the  heavy  library-table,  covered  with  carefully  piled 
magazines. 

"  Hello !  "  he  said,  nodding  easily  to  the  woman 
that  stood  motionless  before  him. 

The  woman's  answer  was  not  ready,  but  Dyker, 
whose  eyes  were  on  surroundings  almost  as  animate, 
pursued : 

"  Upon  my  word,  you  have  it  rather  cozy  here, 
considering  the  neighborhood.  I'm  not  half  so  well 
fixed  myself.  I'm  glad  to  see  that,  Marian,  and 
I'm  more  than  glad  to  see  you." 

He  raised  his  heavy  lids  to  look  at  her.  He  had 
resolved  when,  a  short  while  before,  she  had  sent 
for  him,  to  make  no  mention  of  their  long  separa 
tion.  He  was  sure  that  the  sending  meant  he  was 
to  have  a  chance  to  recall  to  her  the  superior  wisdom 
that  had  expressed  itself  in  his  advice  against  work 
ing  among  the  poor;  but  of  the  time  that  had  elapsed 
since  that  advice  was  given  he  had  meant  to  say 
nothing.  Always  he  had  confidently  expected  this 

355 


356         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

moment,  and,  now  that  it  had  come,  she  must  find 
him  prepared.  He  put  out  his  hand. 

But  Marian  was  thinking  of  how,  in  this  same 
room,  she  had  said  good-by  to  Mary.  She  com 
pressed  her  lips  a  moment  before  answering,  and, 
when  she  did  answer,  it  was  only  to  say,  quite  calmly: 

"  I  don't  want  to  shake  hands  with  you,  Wesley." 

Day  and  night  the  words  that  Mary  had  so  inno 
cently  dropped  concerning  Dyker  had  stirred  the  fire 
in  Marian's  breast.  Supposing  that  her  protegee 
had  shared  with  Rose  the  easy  caresses  of  Wesley, 
even  at  a  time  when  Marian  had  been  on  the  point  of 
accepting  them,  the  failure  of  that  protegee  to  return 
to  the  Settlement  for  aid  or  consolation  had  made 
Marian  the  prey  to  a  hundred  contending  emotions. 
She  was  glad  that  Mary  had  not  come  back,  because 
Mary  adrift  meant  Mary  suffering.  She  was  sorry 
that  Mary  had  not  come  back,  because  she  wanted 
to  ask  the  girl  so  many  things  that  she  had  at  first 
neglected  to  ask.  She  doubted  Mary  and  was 
ashamed  of  her  doubts;  she  doubted  Dyker  and  was 
still  ashamed.  One  thought  tore  at  another,  and  all 
tore  at  her  heart. 

On  entering  the  Settlement  she  had  left  Dyker  in 
a  proud  anger  that  forbade  her  acting  upon  his  offer 
to  come  to  her  whenever  she  should  send  for  him; 
on  dismissing  Mary  she  had  so  framed  her  promise 
of  secrecy  that  she  might  repeat  to  Wesley  the  un 
fortunate  woman's  unconscious  accusation;  and  on 
twisting  and  turning  the  reptilian  thing  over  in  her 
mind,  she  said  in  one  breath  that  she  could  not  send 
for  Dyker  and  could  not  be  at  peace  unless  she  did 
send.  The  fiercest  passion  that  a  conventional  woman 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         357 

has  Is  the  passion  for  the  knowledge  that  will  most 
likely  clinch  her  unhappiness.  Marian  was  certain 
that  she  must  know  the  truth,  and  she  told  herself 
that  she  was  certain  of  but  one  fact  beside:  that 
she  did  not  love  this  man;  that  she  had  never  loved 
him — and,  presumably  because  of  that,  she  had  at 
last,  on  this  day  shortly  after  the  election,  inconti 
nently  telephoned  to  him  to  come  to  Rivington  Street. 

She  had  said  to  herself  that  it  was  unfair  to  con 
demn  him  unheard.  She  had  replied  to  herself  that 
she  did  not  care  enough  about  him  either  to  condemn 
or  to  acquit.  She  had  ended  by  the  realization  that, 
deny  it  as  she  might,  the  fact  of  condemnation  re 
mained;  and  she  had  inclined  solely  toward  the  atti 
tude  of  impartial  justice  until,  in  the  briefest  possible 
time  after  receiving  her  message,  Dyker  had  entered 
this  room.  Then,  immediately,  her  mood  had  once 
more  changed,  as  it  was  to  change  so  often  during 
the  ensuing  interview;  she  had  left  the  bench  and 
had  become  the  prosecutor. 

Perhaps  Dyker's  appearance  was  in  part  to  blame 
for  this.  She  had,  of  course,  not  seen  him  since 
that  summer  parting;  it  is  seldom  pleasant  for  a 
woman  to  find  that  separation  from  her  has  left  no 
scar  upon  an  admirer,  and  it  is  always  annoying  to 
a  district-attorney  to  detect  no  consciousness  of  guilt 
in  the  countenance  of  the  accused;  yet  Dyker  had 
come  into  her  presence  with  a  buoyant  step  and  a 
ready  smile.  The  pressure  of  campaigning  had  les 
sened,  though  it  could  not  wholly  check,  the  prog 
ress  of  his  dissipations,  and  his  face  still  flaunted 
the  tokens  of  Its  former  glory.  His  eyes  were  not 
noticeably  more  timid  than  of  old,  and  his  mouth 


358         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

was,  as  of  old,  hidden.  Add  to  this  the  pleasure, 
still  fresh,  of  his  election,  and  the  satisfaction  of  a 
man  fancying  himself  just  placed  in  a  position  to 
say  "  I  told  you  so  "  to  the  woman  he  loves,  and  it 
will  be  seen  that  Magistrate  Dyker,  if  not  at  his 
best,  had  been  at  least  in  a  moment  of  expansion. 

And  now  she  had  said  that  she  would  not  take 
his  hand !  He  could  scarcely  believe  his  ears. 

"  You  don't  want — I  am  afraid  I  do  not  under 
stand  you,  Marian,"  he  said. 

Her  great  brown  eyes  looked  steadily  into  his 
puzzled  gaze. 

"  Sit  down,  please,"  she  responded. 

Mechanically,  he  drew  a  deep  wicker  chair  to  the 
window,  and  obeyed  her. 

She  sat  opposite  him  and,  for  fully  a  minute,  while 
with  galloping  brain  he  watched  her,  she  looked 
through  the  glass  at  crowded,  shuffling  Rivington 
Street. 

"  It  is  simple  enough,  Wesley,"  she  at  last  re 
sumed.  "  Before  I  can  think  of  renewing  anything 
like  my  old  friendly  attitude  toward  you " 

"  Your  friendly  attitude !  " 

"  It  was  scarcely  more  than  that.  Before  I  can 
renew  it,  there  is  something  that  must  be  explained." 

Dyker's  own  attitude  was  still  that  of  the  average 
lover,  and  the  average  lover  cannot  see  beyond  his 
own  shadow. 

"  Oh," — he  was  momentarily  relieved  and  pre 
pared,  in  consequence,  to  show  a  proper  magnanimity 
— "  you  needn't  explain,  Marian  1  I  knew  you  would 
find  that  I  was  right,  and  that  this  was  no  place  for 
you.  I  appreciate  perfectly  how  you  feel:  you  have 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         359 

been  disappointed  and  disillusioned,  and  it  is  like 
you  handsomely  to  want  to  confess  that  you  were 
wrong.  But  let's  merely  consider  that  done,  and 
say  no  more  about  it." 

He  ended  in  a  warmth  of  good  feeling;  but 
she  did  not  seem  inclined  to  accept  this  proffer, 
and,  as  he  paused,  he  wondered  what  was  in  her 
gaze. 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  you  are  not  quite  correct  in 
your  surmise.  I  have  been  disappointed  and  dis 
illusioned.  I  have  been  disappointed  in  one  of  the 
people  among  whom  I  have  been  working;  but  I 
have  been  disillusioned  in  regard  to  you." 

She  stopped.  He  began  to  guess  now  what  was 
back  of  those  calm  eyes  of  hers.  Disillusioned  in 
regard  to  him?  At  the  first  breath  it  seemed  in 
credible,  but  at  the  next  his  mind  filled  with  the 
ghosts  of  his  experience,  the  grim  figures  that  com 
pose  the  pageant  of  that  real  life  of  a  man,  upon 
which  he  never  raises  the  curtain  for  the  feminine 
eyes  most  dear  to  him. 

"  In  regard  to  me?  "  he  echoed.  He  was  wonder 
ing,  in  hidden  panic,  which  especial  image  had  been 
revealed  to  her,  and  he  sought  defense  in  general 
denial.  "  You  have  been  listening  to  East  Side  neigh 
borhood  gossip,  Marian,  and  I  shouldn't  have  be 
lieved  it  of  you.  You  have  heard  one  of  the  hun 
dreds  of  groundless  ante-election  libels  that  are  the 
common  ammunition  used  against  anyone  in  poli 
tics." 

Her  face,  always  fair,  was  gently  tinted. 

;<  What  I  have  heard,"  she  replied,  "  I  heard  from 
somebody  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  politics." 


360         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Down  here,"  insisted  Dyker,  still  seeking  to  dis 
lodge  the  enemy  and  force  it  into  the  open  field  of 
recognition,  "  down  here  all  the  men  have  something 
to  do  with  politics." 

"  This  was  a  woman,  Wesley." 

He  had  feared  that.  He  had  feared  it  when  she 
first  spoke  of  coming  to  the  Settlement.  But  he 
wasted  no  time  in  such  thought;  he  must,  before  he 
committed  himself,  discover  which  of  several  pos 
sible  women,  was  concerned. 

11  Oh,"  he  laughed,  "  the  women  are  mixed  up 
in  political  gossip,  too;  or,  at  any  rate,"  he  added, 
"  they  are  always  glad  to  repeat  what  their  menfolk 
don't  hesitate  to  tell  them." 

14  The  woman  I  refer  to  was  a  part  of  the  thing 
she  told." 

Marian  said  it  softly,  but  her  white  throat 
trembled. 

Dyker  looked  at  her  swiftly,  and  as  swiftly  low 
ered  his  eyes.  Instantly  now  he  guessed  what  it  was 
that  she  had  heard;  an  instant  more  and  he  thought 
the  thing  improbable.  .  Then,  resolved  at  all 
events  not  to  approach  self-betrayal  by  showing 
his  intuition,  he  assumed  the  point  of  view  of 
the  lawyer. 

"  Marian,"  he  said,  pulling  at  his  mustache  that 
she  might  see — as  she  did — that  his  hand  was  steady, 
"is  this  fair?  Is  it  right  to  condemn  me  on  a 
charge  of  which  I  know  nothing  and  because  of  evi 
dence  of  which  I  haven't  heard  a  syllable?  " 

"  No,"  she  answered,  "  it  isn't  fair.  That  is  why 
I  sent  for  you." 

He  bit  his  lip,  but  faced  her. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         361 

"Well,"  he  said,  "what  is  it?" 

Steadily  she  met  his  renewed  gaze  until  his  eyes 
failed  her. 

Even  then  her  own  eyes,  never  wavering,  could 
find  in  him  not  enough  to  determine  her.  The  desire 
to  get  at  the  truth,  whatever  the  truth  might  be, 
was  plying  its  angry  whip  upon  her  shoulders. 
When  Mary  had  spoken,  Marian  had  received  the 
intelligence  as  innocently  imparted  fact.  But  now 
the  man  before  her  gave  nothing  that  her  inexperi 
ence  could  set  down  as  a  sign  of  what  she  considered 
a  great  sin. 

"  Wesley,"  she  began,  leaning  towards  him,  "  the 
girl  that  told  me  this  told  it  inadvertently.  More 
than  that,  she  did  not  even  know  that  I  had  ever 
heard  of  you.  She  did  not  want  to  hurt  you:  she 
was  grateful  to  you,  because  you  had  rescued  her." 

His  intuition,  then,  had  not  failed  him:  it  was 
Violet. 

"  Why,"  he  smiled,  his  heart  heavy  with  the  fear 
of  losing  Marian's  love,  his  lips  still  sparring  for 
a  more  open  lead,  "  I  am  afraid  I'm  no  knight-er 
rant,  Marian,  to  go  about  rescuing  damsels  in  dis 
tress."  But  he  did  not  like  the  sound  of  the  phrase, 
and,  seeing  that  she  liked  it  no  better,  he  explained: 
"  You  surely  remember  how  I  feel  about  these  poor 
women." 

"  But  she  said  that  your  politics  brought  you  into 
touch  with  the  worst  sort  of  them." 

Marian  paused  there  to  give  him  another  chance, 
but  his  only  protest  was: 

"  Not  my  politics.  The  duties  of  my  profession, 
before  I  was  elected  a  magistrate,  sometimes  made 


3 62         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

it  necessary  to  defend  such  women.    You  must  have 
known  that.    There  was  no  dishonor  there." 

"  And  my  informant  added,"  continued  Marian, 
"  that  you  used  your  political  influence  to  gain  their 
friendship,  perhaps  even  to  protect  them,  and  " 
she    felt   the    depths   before    her;    her   cheeks   went 
hot;    her   brown    eyes    filled — "  and   certainly   to — 

She  faltered.4 

He  felt  it  and  looked  up  with  anger  in  his  eyes. 

"To  what?"  he  demanded. 

She  clasped  her  damp  hands  tight. 

"  To  live  with  them,"  she  said. 

Though  he  had  expected  the  implication,  he  had 
hardly  expected  so  close  an  approach  to  the  specific, 
and  therefore  the  start  to  which  it  behooved  him 
to  give  way  was  not  altogether  disingenuous. 

"  Marian !  "  he  cried. 

She  bent  her  head. 

"  Do  you  believe  that? "  he  asked. 

The  accusation  uttered,  sick  uncertainty  gripped 
and  tossed  her  again. 

"  I  don't  know  what  to  believe." 

"  But  how  can  you  think  I  would  be  capable  of 
such  things?  The  girl  lied." 

Her  judgment  swayed  dizzily.  Between  word 
and  word  she  was  now  for  and  now  against  him. 

"  I  can't  think  of  any  motive  that  this  girl  might 
have  to  lie,"  she  said. 

"  How  do  you  know  what  motive  she  has?  "  re 
turned  Dyker,  realizing  in  what  good  stead  his 
training  as  a  pleader  of  bad  cases  might  stand  him. 
"  How  do  you  know  what  political  enemies  of  mine 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         363 

may  have  sent  her  to  you?  You  say  that,  on  her 
own  confession,  she  is  a  vile  woman " 

"  I  did  not  say  that." 

"  You  said  she  charged  herself  with  being  part 
of  this  alleged  business.  You  confessed  that  you 
were  disappointed  in  her  personally.  What  pos 
sible  credit  can  be  given  to  the  story  of  a  woman 
that  begins  by  admitting  such  abominations?  " 

Marian  tried  to  speak,  but  indecision  choked  her. 

"  I  tell  you,  you  were  tricked,"  he  pursued,  with 
a  glib  rapidity  that  she  did  not  know  whether  to 
attribute  to  innocence  or  guilt.  "  I  may  have  lost 
a  case  for  some  friend  of  this  girl.  I  may  have 
won  a  suit  against  one  of  her  hangers-on.  There  are 
men  in  the  lower  sort  of  politics,  I'm  ashamed  to 
say,  that  don't  hesitate  to  use  such  tools,  and  I  have 
offended  a  good  many  of  them.  Before  you  con 
sidered  this  story  true,  don't  you  feel  that  you  should 
have  thought  of  one  of  these  explanations?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  Marian  faltered.  The  relentless 
tide  of  her  emotions  now  set  in  again  in  his  favor. 
Mary  had  told  her  story  so  calmly,  with  so  little 
feeling  concerning  her  own  sufferings,  that  Marian 
kept  wondering  if  it  might  not  have  been  an  inven 
tion.  She  was  sure  that,  all  along,  somewhere  in 
her  heart,  she  had  wanted  to  think  the  best  of  him; 
wanted,  despite  her  accusing  jealousy,  to  acquit  him. 
"I  don't  know,"  she  repeated  despairingly;  "but" 
— and  the  tide  began  to  flow  once  more — "  unless  I 
can  be  certain  of  her  motive  for  lying  to  me,  don't 
you  see,  Wesley,  don't  you  see  that  I  must  have 
proof  of  your  innocence  from  you  ?  " 

She  looked  at  him  in  wide  appeal.    The  undertow 


364         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

had  caught  her,  and  she  was  crying  for  help  from 
shore.  She  knew  now  that  she  loved  him,  and  she 
had  learned  the  ultimate  tragedy  of  love:  that  love 
and  mistrust  may  be  one. 

"How  can  I  know  anything?"  she  went  on. 
"  How  can  I  be  sure  of  anything?  How  can  I  un 
derstand  such  a  world  as  this?  It  seems  as  if  all 
the  earth  was  lying  to  me,  and  as  if  all  the  earth 
could  lie  and  still  look  honest.  I  trusted  the  girl; 
I  trusted  you.  I  beg  of  you  to  prove  to  me  that 
I  was  right  only  when  I  trusted  you.  Wesley," — 
she  almost  extended  her  arms  to  him — "  tell  me  that 
you  didn't  do  it !  " 

Dyker  saw  his  advantage,  but  decided  that  the 
way  to  keep  it  was  to  be  firm.  He  spoke  quickly, 
yet  coldly. 

"Who  was  this  woman?"  he  asked. 

"  Do  you  think  I  ought  to  tell  you?  "  she  pleaded. 

"Ought  to  tell  me?  Why,  Marian,  how  else 
am  I  to  prove  what  you  ask  me  to  prove?  If  you 
are  to  be  at  all  fair  with  me,  how  can  you  start 
by  hiding  the  false  witnesses  against  me?" 

He  was  right,  she  felt. 

"  Did  you  ever  hear,"  she  asked,  "  of  Mary  Mor 
ton?" 

Too  late  to  weigh  his  words  he  remembered  the 
name  that  the  girl  whom  he  had  called  Violet  had 
signed  to  her  affidavit.  Before  that  recollection  was 
clear  to  him,  he  made  his  reply  in  the  deceit  that  is 
the  refuge  of  all  the  confused. 

"  I  never  did." 

"  You  are  sure?  " 

"  Absolutely  "; — he  had  to  keep  it  up  now — "  al- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         365 

though,  if  she  is  the  sort  of  woman  she  says  she  is, 
she  probably  has  as  many  aliases  as  a  safe-cracker." 

"  But  this  girl — I  should  think  you  would  not 
forget  her  if  you  had  ever  known  her:  she  must  have 
been  good-looking  once.  She  has  blue  eyes  and 
brown  hair.  You  could  see  from  her  face  that  she 
has  suffered,  but  you  could  see  that  she  used  to  be 
almost  beautiful.  She  has  the  walk  of  a  queen." 

"  I  don't  know  her." 

"  Think." — Marian  was  still  intent  upon  cer 
tainty. — "  When  I  saw  her  she  was  both  times 
dressed  alike,  though  on  her  second  visit  her  clothes, 
first  new,  had  grown  a  little  shabby.  She  wore  a 
cloak — I  forget  its  color,  but  it  was  dark — and  a 
beaver  hat.  She " 

He  knew  those  clothes;  he  had  reason  to;  but  his 
interruption  was  in  strict  accord  with  his  previous 
denial: 

"  There  are  thousands  of  women  answering  that 
vague  description.  I  am  sure,  however,  that  I  don't 
know  this  one." 

Marian  did  not  observe  that,  on  his  own  showing, 
his  assurance  was  without  foundation.  Her  words 
had  brought  Mary  vividly  before  her  and,  for  a 
minute,  she  well-nigh  forgot  her  own  distress  in  the 
misery  of  that  figure. 

"  She  has  had  a  great  deal  of  trouble,"  said 
Marian.  "  Why,  from  what  she  told  me,  these  girls 
must  be  worse  treated  than  the  blacks  in  the  Congo; 
they  must  be  far  worse  off  than  our  own  American 
negro  slaves  used  to  be." 

"  No  doubt — if  what  she  said  was  true.  But  I 
know  it  was  not  true.  My  profession  has  made  me 


366         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

see  a  great  deal  of  these  poor  women,  and  I  know 
that  if  they  are  slaves  it  is  because  they  want  to  be." 
He  waved  away  the  whole  matter  with  a  toss  of 
his  hand.  He  wanted  some  information,  and  he 
did  not  want  to  show  why  he  wanted  it.  "  That  all 
goes  to  prove  that  if  it  was  she  who  told  you  this 
foul  story  about  me,  then  the  story  was  that  of  a 
born  liar,"  he  declared.  "  You  say  she  was  here 
twice.  What  were  the  circumstances?  " 

She  told  him. 

He  breathed  more  freely.  He  had  only  to  con 
vince  Marian  and  get  her  to  quit  her  work  in  dis 
gust  before  further  gossip  should  reach  her. 

"And  so  you  don't  know  her?"  she  concluded. 

11  No." 

"Nor  Mrs.  Rose  Legere?" 

"  I  certainly  know  of  that  person,"  he  said — it 
was  the  part  of  wisdom  to  admit  some  knowledge. 
"  Nobody  that  knows  anything  about  our  police- 
courts,  as  I  have  had  to  know,  can  be  entirely  igno 
rant  of  her.  She  is  one  of  the  most  notorious  women 
in  New  York.  I  know  a  great  deal  about  her,  but, 
except  for  one  occasion,  when  I  saw  her  in  a  station- 
house,  I  have  never  set  eyes  on  her  in  my  life." 

He  spoke  with  such  precision  that  Marian  caught 
a  gratified  breath. 

u  Is  she  another  Settlement  visitor? "  inquired 
Wesley,  devoutly  hoping  that  no  miracle  of  reforma 
tion  had,  since  their  last  meeting,  been  wrought  upon 
Rose. 

"  No,  she  is  not.  It  was  she  that  was  said  to 
have  been  one  of  your — your  friends,  until  she  made 
friends  with  your  political  enemies.  The  girl  that 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         367 

told  me  was,  of  course,  the  Mary  Morton  I  have 
mentioned.  She  said  that  you  were  intimate  with 
this  Mrs.  Legere,  and  I  understood  that  even 
Mary- 

Dyker  was  genuinely  glad  to  find  some  accusation 
that  he  could  deny  with  truth. 

"  Never !  "  he  cried. 

Something  in  that  word  and  his  utterance  of  it 
made  her  look  at  him  hard. 

"  She  didn't  want  to  tell  the  story,"  Marian  in 
sisted.  "  I  got  it  from  her.  How  could  it  have 
been  the  result  of  malice  or  a  plot?  Didn't  I  tell 
you  that  she  said  you  had  rescued  her  from  the 
Legere  woman's  house?" 

Dyker  reflected.  He  wished  that  he  had  been  as 
sweeping  in  his  discrediting  of  Violet,  under  the 
pseudonym  of  Mary  Morton,  as  he  had  been  in 
his  discrediting  of  Rose.  Failing  that,  he  might 
even  have  explained  this  rescue  and  have  become 
something  of  a  hero.  Both  opportunities  were,  how 
ever,  gone.  He  must  make  the  best  of  what  re 
mained. 

"  Marian,"  he  said,  speaking  slowly,  quite  calmly, 
and  with  no  small  appearance  of  sincerity  of  pur 
pose,  "  I  needn't  bring  you  any  proof  of  this  Legere 
woman's  bad  character — the  qualities  of  that  char 
acter  you  yourself  know — and  as  for  this  Morton 
girl,  I  can  only  fall  back  on  what  I  have  already 
pointed  out  to  you.  You  say  she  confesses  her  evil 
life:  how  can  you,  then,  credit  anything  an  admit 
tedly  abandoned  creature  may  have  told  you  ?  " 

"  Can't  the  worst  of  women  tell  the  truth  some 
times?" 


368         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Practically  never." 

"  But," — Marian  passed  a  weary  hand  across  her 
forehead — "  how  could  this  girl  be  in  a  position  to 
know  what  she  says  she  knows,  if  she  hadn't  led  just 
the  kind  of  life  that  you  say  makes  her  an  inevitable 
liar?" 

It  was  an  excellent  sort  of  answer.  Dyker  tossed 
his  head. 

"  I  am  hurt,  Marian,"  he  said.  "  I  thought  you 
had  some  faith  in  me;  I  thought  you  knew  me.  I 
don't  see  how  you  can  persist  in  this  attitude — how 
you  can  say  these  things.  Why,  I  have  been  in 
your  house:  I  have  known  you  and  your  father; 
whereas  these  people — Marian,  I  love  you;  why 
should  I  lie  to  you?  " 

She  had  been  keeping  her  hand  upon  her  forehead, 
but  she  lowered  it  now  to  her  eyes,  where  it  was 
joined  by  its  mate. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  moaned.  "That's  just  it: 
I  don't  know." 

"  Then  what,"  he  asked,  "  can  I  do  to  convince 
you?  I  won't  upbraid  you;  I  won't  be  harsh.  My 
sane  course  would  be  to  pay  no  attention  to  accusa 
tions  from  such  a  character  as  this  Mary  Morton, 
and  your  sane  course  would  be  to  pay  no  attention 
to  them.  But  I  know  how  things  are  in  this  neigh 
borhood;  I  know  the  bad  atmosphere  you  have  been 
breathing  ever  since  you  came  down  here.  Long 
ago  I  told  you  exactly  what  would  happen;  I  fore 
saw  it  all.  I  told  you  when  you  insisted  on  going 
into  this  work  that  these  women  would  poison  your 
mind,  distort  your  vision,  make  you  doubt  all  that 
is  best  in  life.  Apparently,  they  have  succeeded; 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         369 

but  I  don't  speak  of  that.  Marian,  unless  it  was 
in  some  police-court — perhaps  at  the  time  I  saw  Rose 
Legere — I  never  saw  this  girl  in  my  life.  I  don't 
understand  her  enmity  any  better  than  you  do.  It 
may  spring  from  some  imagined  wrong  to  one  of 
her  friends,  or  it  may  be  a  political  plot.  But,  ex 
cept  as  it  affects  your  regard  for  me,  I  don't  care 
anything  about  it.  All  that  I  do  care  about,  all  that 
I  do  want  to  accomplish  is  to  restore  you  to  a  normal 
view  of  things,  get  you  out  of  these  foul  mental 
and  material  surroundings,  and  bring  you  back  to 
your  own  proper  world.  I  want  to  do  this  and  to 
make  you  know  the  truth  concerning  myself.  Tell 
me  what  will  bring  this  about,  and  I'll  do  it  without 
a  moment's  loss  of  time." 

He  thought  that,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  there 
was  nothing  very  difficult  or  inconvenient  that  she 
could  demand;  but  he  had  counted  too  much  on  the 
artificial  and  too  little  upon  the  natural  and  primi 
tive  woman. 

Her  face  still  hidden,  she  felt  the  full  force  of 
his  appeal,  but  the  tempest  had  its  wild  will  of  her. 
She  believed  him  guilty;  she  believed  him  innocent. 
She  believed  that,  if  he  were  guilty,  temptation  had 
come  from  the  woman;  she  believed  that,  if  he  were 
innocent,  there  was  nevertheless  something — she  did 
not  know  what — that  he  was  hiding  from  her. 
Faith  was  ready  to  destroy  much,  but  would  not 
jealousy  destroy  more?  Her  jealousy  had  consumed 
dignity,  it  had  ravaged  custom,  it  was  burning  re 
straint. 

Mary's  words  had  drawn  in  Marian's  mind  a  con 
crete  picture,  and  the  contemplation  of  that  picture 


370         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

had  awakened  an  anger  in  which  her  genuine  love 
had  for  the  first  time  genuinely  expressed  itself.  Be 
fore,  she  could  have  heard  with  light  regret  of 
Dyker's  engagement  to  marry  another  woman.  Be 
fore,  she  might  herself  have  drifted  with  him 
through  a  placid  wooing  into  the  port  of  marriage 
that,  until  this  revelation,  she  had  in  no  wise  under 
stood.  But  now  she  saw  things  specifically,  and  in 
the  element  of  the  specific  the  quality  that  she  had 
known  as  "  womanliness  "  was  dissolved  and  the 
thing  that  she  at  last  knew  to  be  Woman  was 
evolved. 

The  issue,  she  was  thus  still  determined,  depended 
upon  proof  of  innocence.  He  must  be  clean,  and 
she  must  know  it. 

She  uncovered  her  fine  face,  strangely  stronger  for 
its  grief. 

"  Wesley,"  she  said,  "  I  do  remember  all  that  you 
told  me  these  women  and  this  work  would  do  to 
me.  If  you  prove  to  be  wrong,  I  shall  stay  on  here, 
and,  of  course,  never  see  you  again;  but  if  you  prove 
to  be  right  I  shall  give  it  up,  and  then,  Wesley,  I 
shall  marry  you." 

He  rose  with  a  glad  cry;  but  she,  rising  also, 
waved  him  back. 

"  Not  yet,"  she  said.  "  Either  find  Mary  Morton 
and  the  proofs  that  she  is  dishonest — not  only  what 
I  know  she  is,  but  dishonest  in  what  she  would  say 
and  do — show  me  this,  or  else " 

With  straining  resolution,  he  confronted  her. 

"  Or  else?  "  he  prompted. 

"  Or  else  bring  her  to  me  with  her  own  denial  and 
explanation." 


XXV 

DAUGHTERS  OF  ISHMAEL 

WHEN  Mary  left  Rivington  Street  she  faced 
the  inevitable.  She  had  seen  the  impossi 
bility  of  domestic  service;  she  knew  noth 
ing  of  any  other  trade;  she  could  not  endure  the 
shame  of  an  institution,  and  her  fortune  consisted 
of  just  fourteen  dollars  and  fifty  cents. 

She  walked,  for  a  long  time,  aimlessly.  The  night 
thickened  and,  block  by  block,  the  streets  flashed 
into  electric  illumination,  each  separate  flame  glow 
ing  like  a  malevolent  eye  to  show  her  misery.  Her 
strength,  never  yet  fully  restored,  failed  her.  Her 
feet  were  tired,  her  knees  bent  irregularly,  her  head 
ached.  As  at  her  first  sight  of  it,  the  city,  which 
she  knew  scarcely  better  than  on  that  spring  evening 
when-  she  had  been  tossed  into  it,  was  a  conscious 
prison  implacably  shutting  her  in  forever. 

She  walked  westward,  and  then  northward.  She 
dodged  across  Fifth  Avenue  among  the  automobiles 
of  careless,  comfortable  people  on  their  ways  to 
one  place  or  another  of  swift  enjoyment.  She  passed 
a  notorious  cafe  at  the  warm  windows  of  which  she 
saw,  seated  at  laden  tables  and  opposite  leering  men, 
the  painted  faces  of  softly  gowned  women,  the  more 
successful  examples  of  what  she  soon  must  be.  And 
she  came  to  hurrying  Broadway  through  whose 
crowds  she  saw  silently  and  cunningly  darting,  with 

371 


372         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

smiling  hate  written  on  their  tired,  rouged  lips,  the 
girls  whose  dawn  was  the  lighting  of  the  street-lamps 
and  from  whom  she  wanted  to  ask  for  instruction  in 
the  one  means  of  livelihood  that  remained  to  her. 

Her  soul  was  as  weakened  and  vitiated  as  her 
body,  and  by  much  the  same  forces.  Into  her  escape 
from  Rose's,  into  her  work  at  Mrs.  Turner's,  into 
her  appeal  to  the  employment-agency  and  her  tasks 
at  Mrs.  Chamberlin's  she  had  put  every  particle  of 
strength  that  she  could  harness,  and  the  result  had 
always  been  failure.  The  social  system  was  too 
mighty.  She  could  not  prevail  against  it.  She  must 
do  its  bidding,  and  since  it  was  so  impractically  con 
stituted  as  to  bid  her  prey  upon  it,  her  sole  solace 
must  be  found  in  preying  fiercely. 

She  turned  into  a  cross-street,  full  of  refulgent 
drinking-places  that  beckoned  by  swinging  doors,  be 
hind  which  were  the  voices  of  singers  and  through 
which  passed,  in  alone  and  out  with  shame-faced 
men,  unending  streams  of  women  with  white  faces 
and  vermillion  mouths  and  sadly  encircled  eyes.  But 
Mary  pressed  westward,  though  she  did  not  clearly 
know  her  intention  until,  having  crossed  two  avenues, 
she  found  that  the  cafes  gave  place  to  small  shops, 
and  that  the  shops  were  giving  place  to  tall,  moldy 
buildings  with  long  stairways  before  them,  houses 
that  had  once,  plainly,  made  homes,  but  that  were 
now,  as  plainly,  barracks  for  lodgers. 

From  die  of  these  she  saw  come  a  slight  girl  under 
a  huge  hat  heavy  with  two  great  plumes.  Mary 
waited  until  this  girl  drew  near,  first  hesitated  when 
she  observed  that  the  girl  was  scarcely  fifteen,  then 
spoke  when  she  noted  the  bedizened  dress  and  the 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         373 

face  of  which  the  childish  beauty  had  been  trained 
to  maturity  and  hardness. 

"  Can  you  tell  me  if  I  can  get  a  room  around 
here?"  she  inquired. 

The  girl's  knowing  eyes  studied  her. 

"Hello!"  she  said.  "When  did  you  hit  the 
road?" 

"  To-day.     I  want  to  find  a  room." 

"  Well,  you  can't  go  wrong.  The  house  I  live 
in  is  full-up;  but  you  can  ring  'most  any  bell  along 
here  and  get  what  you  want.  There  ain't  no  choice. 
One's  as  bum  as  another." 

She  nodded  saucily  and  went  on  her  way,  and 
Mary  climbed  the  steps  of  the  first  house  she  came  to. 

Her  ring  was  answered  by  a  woman  that  appeared, 
as  far  as  Mary  could  observe  in  the  faint  light,  to  be 
about  sixty  years  old.  Her  hair  was  gray  and 
severely  arranged;  her  dress  was  shabby,  and  she 
looked  very  tired.  To  Mary  she  did  not  seem  to  be 
at  all  the  type  that  would  conduct  the  sort  of  place 
which  the  wanderer  just  then  needed. 

"  Can  you  rent  me  a  room?  "  she  nevertheless  in 
quired. 

"  With  privileges?  "  asked  the  woman. 

It  was  a  phrase  new  to  its  hearer,  but  she  under 
stood  that  it  described  the  kind  of  room  she  wanted. 

'  Yes,"  she  almost  whispered. 

But  the  woman  did  not  lower  her  voice.  Her 
descent,  as  Mary  afterwards  learned,  had  been  by 
slow  stages,  and  her  complaisance  had  been  enforced 
through  a  history  that  began  with  the  establishment 
of  a  respectable  boarding-house,  when  a  reform-elec 
tion  had  driven  her  husband  from  the  police-force, 


374         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

passed  through  a  widowhood  imposed  upon  by  ab 
sconding  lodgers  and  raised  house-rents,  and  ended 
by  the  admission  of  first  one  and  then  many  patrons 
that  were,  though  they  wanted  what  she  had  not 
always  cared  to  give,  at  least  certain  to  pay  what  she 
had  to  turn  over  to  the  church-corporation  that 
owned  the  property. 

"  I  got  a  nice  second-floor  front,  just  a  step  from 
the  bath-room,  at  eighteen  dollars,"  she  said. 

"A  month?"  inquired  Mary. 

The  woman  regarded  her  as  if  she  were  somewhat 
of  a  curiosity. 

"  Certainly  not:  eighteen  a  week." 

"  Oh,  I— I  couldn't  afford  that." 

"  It's  a  nice  room." 

"  Yes,  I  guess  it  is,  but " 

"  I  might  let  it  to  you  for  fifteen,  to  start  with." 

"  I  couldn't  afford  it." 

"  Well,  there's  the  parlor.  It's  only  twelve,  an'll 
be  vacant  to-morrow." 

"  I'm  afraid  I'll  have  to  get  a  place  for  to-night. 
Haven't  you  anything  cheaper?  " 

"  You  don't  seem  to  know  nothin'  about  prices, 
miss."  The  landlady  appeared  to  reflect.  "  But 
there's  the  third-floor  back  hall-room,"  she  added; 
"  I  can  let  you  have  it  for  seven,  an'  better  than 
that  you  can't  do  anywheres." 

Mary  hesitated. 

'  You  can  easy  make  three  times  that  much,"  the 
woman  urged. 

"  Do  you "  Mary  wet  her  dry  lips.  "  Do  you 

think  so?" 

"Think  so?     Why,  the  lady  that  had  that  room 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         375 

for  a  whole  year  till  last  week  made  as  high  as 
twenty  dollars  a  night.  She  moved  out  o'  here  to 
her  own  flat.  But  then,  she  was  good-looking,  of 
course." 

Mary  had  entertained  some  vague  notion  of  a 
small  gas-stove,  and  some  saving  in  the  matter  of 
meals;  but  this  the  landlady  could  in  no  wise  permit. 

"  The  insurance  sharks  won't  allow  it,"  she  said, 
and  concluded  in  a  tone  that  showed  the  later  fact 
to  be  of  more  importance :  "  Besides,  it  so  runs  up 
the  gas-bills." 

Mary  said  no  more.  She  paid  for  a  week  in  ad 
vance,  and  was  shown  at  once  to  the  cell  she  had 
leased  so  dearly. 

It  was  a  little,  gaudily-papered  room  scarcely  fif 
teen  feet  long  and  not  much  more  than  two-thirds 
that  in  width.  A  stationary  washstand  was  so  placed 
that  the  door  could  not  open  freely.  At  the  single 
narrow  window  stood  an  unsteady  table  of  no  ap 
parent  purpose,  and  along  the  side  a  clothes-press 
and  a  narrow,  pine  bureau.  The  bed,  however,  was 
the  chief  feature  of  furniture,  and  that  was  large 
and  comfortable. 

"  I'll  give  you  clean  sheets  every  Sunday  morning 
regular,"  said  the  landlady;  "  but  any  changes  you 
want  between  you'll  have  to  pay  for  the  washin' 
of." 

She  demanded,  and  received,  twenty-five  cents  for 
a  latch-key,  added  that  she  permitted  no  noise  in  the 
rooms,  and  departed,  leaving  Mary  sitting  on  the 
edge  of  the  bed. 

The  girl's  experiences  in  the  house  of  Rose  Legere 
had  prepared  her  but  imperfectly  for  this  adventurec 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

It  was  a  new  business,  and  Mary  did  not  know  how 
to  embark  upon  it.  She  was  as  lost  as  the  chorus- 
girl,  unused  to  the  purchase  of  railway  tickets  and 
the  engaging  of  "  hotel-accommodations,"  who  finds 
herself  stranded  in  a  small  town. 

She  went  to  the  bureau  and  looked  at  herself  in 
its  distorting  mirror,  in  an  effort  to  appraise  her 
wares.  Her  hollow  cheeks  needed  rouge.  Her  dull 
eyes  needed  belladonna.  Her  clothes  were  worn. 
She  felt  that  she  should  start  work  immediately,  but 
she  was  afraid.  She  went  to  bed  and  slept. 

By  the  next  evening  she  had  spent  all  but  a  dollar 
and  some  few  cents  of  the  seven  dollars  and  a  quar 
ter  that  had  remained  to  her.  With  her  bundles 
under  her  aching  arm,  she  was  returning  to  her 
lodging-house  to  prepare  for  work,  when  she  stopped 
at  the  "  Ladies'  Entrance  "  of  the  corner-saloon  and, 
going  into  a  bare  apartment  for  a  drink  of  whiskey, 
found,  seated  at  a  table,  as  the  only  other  customer, 
the  girl  of  whom  she  had  asked  her  questions  on  the 
night  before. 

The  child  smiled  as  pleasantly  as  her  hardened 
face  would  permit. 

11  Hello,  kid,"  she  said.    "  How's  tricks?  " 

"  Hello,"  replied  Mary. 

"  Sit  down  here,"  said  the  girl. 

Mary  accepted  her  invitation,  and  gave  the  grin 
ning  waiter  her  order. 

"Got  settled?"  asked  the  girl,  when  the  waiter 
had  come  and  gone  again. 

"  Yes,"  replied  Mary,  "  I  got  a  room." 

"Where?" 

"  The  fifth  door  from  here." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         377 

The  girl  whistled.  She  was  proud  of  her  knowl 
edge. 

"That  old  cat  Charlotte  Michaels!"  she  com 
mented.  "  I  bet  she  stuck  you." 

"  She  charges  me  seven  dollars  a  week  for  a  third- 
floor  back  hall-bedroom." 

"  Hell,  that's  a  steal.  Come  next  door  to  where 
I  am,  next  week.  There'll  be  a  better  room  there, 
then,  for  a  dollar  less." 

Mary  looked  at  the  child.  It  seemed  strange  that 
she  should  be  about  to  ask  of  one  perhaps  two  years 
her  junior  for  directions  in  the  ways  of  the  street; 
but  she  saw  that  the  childishness  before  her  was 
childishness  without  innocence,  was  even  lined  and 
scarred  by  wisdom.  She  wondered  about  her  own 
face. 

"  I'm  goin'  to  start  out  to-night,"  she  said. 

In  the  etiquette  of  this  trade  the  workers  ask  no 
questions  of  one  another  and  offer  few  biographies 
save  those  fictitious  ones,  the  threadbare,  unimagina 
tive  lies,  which  they  reserve  for  their  inquisitive  pur 
chasers.  Mary's  entertainer,  therefore,  put  forward 
no  inquiries  save  one: 

"  New  in  this  town?  "  she  asked. 

"  I'm  new  in  the  business,"  said  Mary. 

The  child  eyed  her  doubtingly. 

"  Come  off,"  she  good-naturedly  replied. 
'  Yes,  I  am.     I  was  in  a  house  onc't,  but  I'm  new 
to  this,  an'  I  ain't  just  sure  how  to  go  about  it." 

"  Oh,"  said  the  child,  "  it's  dead  easy  to  learn 
the  curves,  but  it's  the  hardest  job  in  the  world. 
Can't  your  fellow  put  you  wise?  " 

"My  fellow?" 


378         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Sure,  your  fellow,  your  friend,  your  sweetheart. 
Honest,  now;  ain't  you  workin'  for  nobody?" 

"  No." 

"  Well,  you  ought  to  be.  Most  all  the  girls  is. 
You  can't  get  along  right  without  one.  Who's  goin' 
to  go  your  bail  when  you're  pinched?  " 

"Will  I  be  pinched?" 

"  About  as  often  as  onc't  a  month,  kid — unless 
you  let  the  cop  call  onc't  a  week." 

"  I  guess  I  can  stand  him,"  said  Mary.  She  was 
past  the  stage  of  objections. 

"  You'll  have  to  pay  him  anyhow,  you  know." 

"I  thought  I  might  have  to." 

"  Then  you  thought  dead  right.  Why  don't  you 
get  a  fellow  ?  They's  lots  of  them.  They  got  politi 
cal  pulls.  Of  course,  they  don't  leave  you  much 
money  for  yourself,  but  they  certainly  can  fix  things 
up  for  you." 

"Have  you  a  fellow?"  asked  Mary. 

"  I  sure  have,"  said  the  child,  grandly.  "  My  girl 
friend  an'  I  have  had  one  between  us  ever  since  we 
left  school  last  June." 

"  Does  he  treat  you  right?  " 

"  As  good  as  any.  He  beats  us  up  once  in  a  while 
when  we  don't  earn  enough,  or  when  he's  more  than 
usual  lit  up.  But  he  keeps  the  cops  away,  an'  he 
gets  us  good  trade,  an'  he's  true  to  the  two  of  us. 
He'd  ought  to  be;  we  make  good  money  for  him." 

Mary  listened  in  a  kind  of  awe. 

"  You  like  him?  "  she  asked. 

"  I  love  him,"  the  child  emphatically  declared. 
"  Lots  of  the  girls  hates  their  fellows,  but  daren't 
leave  'em  because  their  fellows'd  have  'em  pinched 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         379 

right  off — but  I  love  mine.     You  ought  to  get  one. 
I'll  put  you  next." 

"  No,"  said  Mary,  "  I  think  I'll  wait;  but  I  wish 
I  knew  the  curves." 

"  Oh,  hell ;  it's  dead  easy,  I  tell  you."  The  child 
gulped  her  whiskey  and  went  on:  "  You  just  put  on 
your  glad  rags  at  eight  o'clock  an'  walk  Broadway 
from  Twenty-third  to  Forty-second.  If  you  can 
hustle,  you  can  land  half  a  dozen  before  one  o'clock. 
When  they  give  you  the  glad  eye,  take  it,  an'  when 
they  don't,  just  you  walk  by  'em  sort  of  hummin' 
under  your  breath.  Stop  an'  look  in  the  store-win 
dows,  an'  they'll  come  like  flies.  But  always  be  sure 
to  get  your  money  first.  Ask  'em  two  dollars  if  they 
look  that  strong,  or  one  if  they're  cheap  guys — but 
don't  ever  take  a  cent  less'n  fifty  cents.  I  always 
gets  the  two-plunk  myself,  unless  a  piker  stands  out 
for  a  dark  corner  or  hallway  and  tries  the  quarter 
game:  then  I  go  through  his  clothes  for  all  he's 
got." 

Mary  rose,  with  averted  eyes. 

"  Thank  you,"  she  said. 

"  Oh,  that's  all  right,"  said  the  child.  "  You  just 
take  my  tip,  an'  you'll  make  good." 

And,  if  by  managing,  by  the  most  detestible  sort 
of  work,  to  keep  clothes  upon  her  back,  food  in  her 
stomach  and  a  roof  over  her  head,  was  making  good, 
Mary  did  it.  Everything  fell  out  as  the  little  girl 
had  described.  That  night  the  adventurer,  with  no 
alternative,  sank  the  last  of  her  scruples,  and,  when 
her  room-rent  next  fell  due,  she  paid  it  and  had  a 
margin  of  several  dollars  to  place  in  her  stocking. 

There  was  not,  she  found,  very  much  to  be  saved, 


380        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

for  the  whole  world  seemed  to  mark  her  as  legiti 
mate  prey. 

First,  the  policemen  were  quick  to  see  that  she  was 
an  unprotected  newcomer,  and,  one  by  one,  to  stop 
her  and  threaten  her  with  arrest.  In  the  beginning, 
she  was  afraid  to  slip  them  their  tithes,  and  did  it 
timidly  and  awkwardly;  but,  when  she  saw  how 
jauntily  and  graciously  they  accepted  payment,  she 
had  the  bills  always  ready  at  the  time  when  they 
were  expected  and,  with  the  bills,  the  caresses  that, 
not  infrequently,  had  to  accompany  them. 

Other  expenses  were  proportionate.  Rent  gained 
upon  the  advance  of  prosperity.  Showy  clothes,  if 
not  the  best,  were  a  necessity,  and  the  second-hand 
shops  raised  their  prices  on  the  suspicion  of  her  pro 
fession.  Rainy  nights  came,  when  there  was  almost 
no  business  to  be  done.  The  work  was  of  a  char 
acter  that  required  sturdy  food,  and  this  must  be 
bought  in  restaurants  tacitly  conducted  for  her  class 
and  charging  accordingly.  The  men,  she  soon  dis 
covered,  were  as  loath  to  buy  her  a  supper  as  they 
were  ready  to  buy  her  drinks,  a  condition  the  sole 
consolation  of  which  was  the  fact  that  alcohol  dulled 
whatever  remained  of  the  fine  edge  of  sensibility. 

Some  of  her  cursory  Antonies,  regarding  their 
transactions  as  they  regarded  their  other  business 
affairs,  were  honest,  but  most  were  honest  only  when 
they  had  to  be,  and  to  them  Mary  and  her  kind  were 
beasts  of  burden  not  worthy  of  the  stipulated  hire. 
There  were  the  lechers  that  wanted  only  to  waste 
the  busy  minutes  in  unremunerative  talk;  there  were 
the  seekers  that  endeavored  to  secure  through 
hideous  formulae  of  affection  what  they  were  too 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         381 

mean  frankly  to  purchase ;  there  were  the  hypocritical 
male  animals  that,  above  suspicion  in  their  daylight 
life,  considered  the  women  of  the  night  as  fair  game 
for  cheating,  and  then  there  were  the  careful  toads, 
who  prided  themselves  upon  their  shrewdness,  and 
who  bargained  and  haggled  as  a  man  would  be 
ashamed  to  bargain  and  haggle  for  a  dog. 

It  was  a  trade  of  hard  hours,  hard  walking,  and 
hard  drinking,  and,  in  the  glaring  cafes  where  she 
often  sat  with  her  fellow-workers  waiting  to  be 
smiled  at  by  the  hunters,  Mary,  though  she  met  many 
girls  that  fared  worse  than  herself,  met  few  that, 
when  truthful,  told  of  faring  better.  The  woman 
that  quitted  her  landlady's  care  for  "  a  flat  of  her 
own  "  represented  the  ideal  toward  which  this  whole 
army  was  hoping,  but  was  an  ideal  mythical. 

Nearly  all  were  working  in  health  and  out,  and 
saving  nothing.  Nearly  all  were  in  bondage  to  task 
masters  that  slunk  along  after  them  through  the 
streets,  saw  them  strike  a  bargain,  waited  in  the 
shadows  of  a  nearby  house  until  the  wage  was  paid, 
and  then  came  forward,  before  the  customer  had 
turned  the  corner,  to  exact  their  tribute.  Born, 
through  the  effects  of  a  wasteful  industrial  system,  in 
cellars  upon  beds  of  rags,  herded  as  children  in  attics 
where  a  family  of  ten  slept  in  a  space  too  small  for 
five,  bred  in  poverty,  always  underfed  and  never 
properly  protected  from  the  weather,  some  of  them 
were  used  to  hardship  that  no  decent  social  justice 
would  ever  have  permitted.  Others  had  been  lured 
from  comfortable  homes.  Still  others  were  the  faster 
fettered  because  they  had  gone  from  homes  too  re 
spectable  to  allow  of  any  return.  But  almost  every- 


382         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

one,  through  fear  of  exposure,  dread  of  jail  and  re 
formatory,  and  awe  of  their  owners'  political  influ 
ences,  was  the  chattel  of  a  slavery  as  thorough  as  that 
of  which  Max  Grossman  was  a  minor  instrument. 

The  majority  of  these  toilers  were  ready  to  re 
ceive,  or  had  long  since  received,  the  seeds  of  tubercu 
losis;  few  could  continue  their  work  for  five  years, 
and  ninety-five  per  cent.,  as  a  drunken  young  college 
undergraduate  one  evening  cheerfully  informed 
Mary,  were  suffering  from  one  or  other,  and  some 
times  from  all  three,  of  the  trio  of  diseases  common 
to  their  business.  Out  from  those  stuffy  bedrooms 
and  those  smoke-clouded,  song-filled  cafes,  men  car 
ried  the  scourging  social  illnesses  to  innocent  wives 
and  to  unborn  children  destined  to  dwarfed  or  sight 
less  lives.  The  sufferer  might  believe  himself  cured 
and  bear  infection  years  later. 

"  Now,  take  yourself,  for  instance,"  the  lad  had 
resumed,  his  cheeks  still  rosy  with  youth,  but  his 
eyes  aflame  with  liquor.  "  I  know  something  about 
these  things;  but  I  couldn't  tell  whether  you  were 
free  or  not.  You  might  be  sick  a  long  time  before 
even  you  could  tell,  and  then  you  wouldn't  risk  star 
vation  by  telling  about  it.  You  might  be  sick  right 
now  for  all  I  know.  But  look  out  for  the  worst 
of  all!" 

Mary  heard  him  with  as  little  heed  as  she  had 
heard  most  men.  She  had  learned  all  that  he  said 
from  women  who  knew  more  of  it  than,  she  hoped, 
this  boy  would  ever  know,  and  she  had  been  well 
assured  that  it  was  a  danger  that  no  preventive 
could  wholly  defy  and  no  care  be  certain  to 
escape. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         383 

After  all,  she  used  to  reflect,  nothing  much  mat 
tered.  She  had  nothing  pleasant  to  look  forward 
to  and,  therefore,  she  wisely  refrained,  save  for  one 
advancing  idea,  from  looking  forward.  She  had 
no  past  that  did  not  have  its  pain  for  her  vision,  and, 
therefore,  with  this  sole  exception,  she  resolutely 
kept  her  eyes  upon  the  present  day. 

Yet  gradually  one  great  passion  was  growing 
within  her.  That  process  of  thought  which  had  be 
gun  in  her  encounter  with  Philip  Beekman,  when 
she  left  his  mother's  employment,  had  been  hastened 
in  its  growth  by  what  Marian  Lennox  had  said  and 
failed  to  do,  and  the  shock  of  the  girl's  embarkation 
upon  her  new  profession  had  only  momentarily  re 
tarded  it.  She  was  not  large  enough — few  of  us 
are — to  see  the  conditions  behind  the  individual,  nor 
yet  greatly  to  concern  herself  with  individuals  that 
did  not  directly  concern  her;  but  she  saw  clearly  her 
own  plight,  and  now  saw,  or  thought  she  saw,  that 
this  plight  was  due  entirely  to  the  machinations  of 
the  man  who  had  taken  her  from  her  home  and 
brought  her  to  New  York.  She  could  have  loved 
him,  and  so  she  hated  him;  she  could  still  feel  a 
tenderness  for  what  he  might  have  been,  so  she  per 
mitted  herself  to  feel  only  animosity  for  what  he 
had  proved  himself  to  be.  To  him  she  traced  di 
rectly  all  that  had  befallen  her,  and  as  she  could 
not  go  beyond  him,  so  from  him,  she  slowly  and 
finally  resolved,  she  would  exact  payment.  That 
thought  waxed  in  her  tired  mind;  it  was  fed  with 
every  throe  of  her  pained  body  until  it  dominated 
her  circumscribed  outlook  upon  the  world.  It  even 
saved  her  from  suffering,  because  it  so  possessed  her 


384         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

that  it  armored  her  against  all  lesser  things.  She 
had  found,  at  last,  a  purpose  in  life. 

It  was  almost  coincident  with  her  realization  of 
this  that  Mary  realized  something  else.  She  went 
immediately  to  a  physician. 

Dr.  Helwig,  a  man  with  an  enormous  paunch  and 
a  round  face  and  triple  chin,  was  one  of  the  many 
excellent  practitioners  that  depend  for  their  living 
— and  it  is  a  good  one — upon  the  class  to  which 
Mary  belonged.  He  treated  the  matter  for  what 
it  was:  a  commonplace  in  his  day's  work.  At  the 
end  of  a  week  he  confirmed  her  fears. 

For  a  moment  she  reeled  under  the  blow.  The 
bookcases  with  their  ponderous  volumes  in  dark 
bindings,  the  shelves  burdened  with  phials,  the  glass 
medicine-case,  the  convertible  table  for  minor  opera 
tions,  the  crowded  desk,  and  even  the  fat  physician 
before  it,  seemed  to  whirl  in  a  mad  saraband. 

"  Come,  come !  "  she  heard  the  doctor  say,  as  he 
thrust  an  uncorked  bottle  of  smelling-salts  under  her 
nose. 

"  How  long  will  it  last?  "  she  panted. 

"  We  must  keep  up  our  treatment  for  six  months 
or  a  year,"  he  answered.  "  Meantime,  diet  and 
quiet.  No  liquor.  If  you  were  a  millionaire,  I'd 
prescribe  a  long  sea-voyage  or  a  trip  to  Hot 
Springs." 

Out  of  the  chaos  of  her  brain  a  sudden  idea  was 
shaping. 

"  What,"  she  inquired,  "  about  other  people  catch 
ing  this?" 

He  knew  her  business  perfectly,  and  he  knew  that 
what  he  had  to  say  on  this  point  would  weigh  but 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         385 

little  in  the  scale  against  want.     Nevertheless,  he 
made  the  common  answer. 

After  that  she  listened  to  all  the  instructions  that 
he  gave  her.  More  than  ever  now  she  had  her  pur 
pose  in  life. 


XXVI 

"THE  LEAST  OF  THESE" 

A  WEEK  later,  in  a  lamp-lighted  street,  Mary 
and  Carrie  met.    Each  girl  was  too  conscious 
of  her  own  business  to  remark  that  it  was 
the  business  of  her  acquaintance,  and  each  tried  to 
avoid  the  other;  but  before  recognition  was  complete 
they   were    face   to    face.     Silence   was    confession. 
Mary  spoke. 

"  Hello,"  she  said,  "  it's  a  long  time  since  I  seen 
you.  How  are  you,  anyways?  " 

Carrie,  though  still  a  homely  girl,  wore  a  close- 
fitting  coat  that  made  the  best  of  her  figure.  Her 
hat  was  wide  and  new  and,  as  she  answered,  she 
turned  from  the  light. 

"  Pretty  well,"  she  said,  and  paused  short. 

"  I  guess,"  said  Mary,  "  you  thought  it  was  queer, 
my  never  comin'  to  see  you;  but  I  haven't  had  a 
single  chance.  I'll  come  soon,  honest  I  will.  How's 
Katie?" 

"  I  don't  know,"  Carrie  slowly  answered,  "  I'm 
not  living  with  her  any  more." 

'  You  ain't?    Since  when  ain't  you?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know — a  couple  of  weeks." 

"You  two  didn't  scrap?" 

"  No.  I  had  to  go  away."  And  then,  to  divert 
the  fire,  Carrie  added:  "Are  you  still  working  at 
that  place  the  Settlement-people  got  for  you?" 

386 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         387 

"  No,  I  left  that  long  ago.  Have  you  gone  back 
to  the  shirtwaist-factory?  " 

"  I  couldn't:  the  strike  was  never  settled,  and,  any 
how,  they  wouldn't  have  taken  me  back  if  I'd  been 
willing  to  go." 

Mary  looked  at  the  long  coat  and  the  gray  hat. 

"  But,  say,"  she  began,  "  you  don't  look " 

Her  eyes  dropped  to  Carrie's  and,  suddenly,  she 
knew.  Her  voice  softened. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  she  said.     "  I  had  to  do  it,  too." 

Silently  they  touched  hands.  The  Lithuanian's 
breast  rose  and  fell  quickly. 

V  I  couldn't  do  anything  else,"  said  Carrie,  but  only 
in  explanation,  not  in  extenuation  or  excuse.  ;'  There 
was  no  other  work  I  could  do." 

"  I  know,"  said  Mary. 

"  And  everywhere  I  went,"  continued  Carrie,  "  he 
followed  me.  He  was  always  just  behind  me  when 
I  walked,  always  just  around  the  corner  when  I  stood 
still.  When  I  was  dizzy  and  hungry,  he  always 
looked  well  fed  and  always  had  the  money  in  his 
hand.  He  waited,  waited,  waited." 

'  You  mean  your  fellow?  "  Mary  asked. 

Carrie  assented.  "  If  you  can  call  him  that,"  she 
said.  "  He  has  two  or  three  others  working  for  him, 
or  he'd  be  across  the  street  now.  I'm  different  from 
them — freer.  I'm  not  afraid  of  him,  and  so  he  is 
a  little  afraid  of  me." 

Mary  took  the  girl's  arm. 

;<  They  won't  let  us  stop  this  way  on  the  pave 
ment,"  she  said.  "  Come  in  here  and  have  a  drink." 

They  went  into  the  women's  room  of  one  of  the 
quieter  saloons.  Mary,  mindful  of  the  doctor's  direc- 


388         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

tions,  took  only  carbonated  water,  but  Carrie  ordered 
whiskey. 

Mary,  with  her  stomach  crying  out  for  the  alcohol, 
and,  in  that  wrenching  desire,  nearly  seizing  her 
companion's  liquor,  sipped  the  water. 

"  I've  quit  it,"  she  averred.     "  It  don't  pay." 

"  Most  of  the  men  make  you  take  it,"  said 
Carrie. 

"  Yes,"  Mary  admitted,  "  but  you  can  chuck  it 
on  the  floor  if  you're  fly."  She  took  another  sip  of 
the  water,  and  then  asked:  "Why  don't  you  shake 
this  man  if  you're  not  scared  of  him.  You  can  come 
with  me,  you  know." 

"  It  wouldn't  be  good  business,"  Carrie  declared. 
"  I  need  somebody  with  influence  to  look  after  me 
in  case  I'm  arrested." 

Mary  was  silent  for  a  minute,  thinking. 

"Perhaps  you're  right,"  she  granted;  "there's 
one  of  'em  I'd  like  to  find." 

"Who  is  it?" 

"  I'll  tell  you  sometime. — Look  here :  I  don't  feel 
like  workin'  Broadway  to-night,  an'  I've  got  some 
money.  Let's  do  a  dance-hall." 

They  "  did  "  several.  At  the  first  a  mask-ball  was 
in  progress;  the  bachanalian  guests  had  rented  ex 
travagant  costumes;  confetti  was  tossed  by  the  on 
lookers,  and  swiftly  shifting  lights  of  red  and  blue, 
of  green  and  purple,  played  upon  the  dancers,  whose 
whirling  shadows,  monstrously  magnified,  were 
thrown  upon  sheeted  walls.  At  another,  there  was 
an  explosion  of  obscene  epithets  followed  by  a  fight, 
which  made  retreat  advisable;  and  at  a  third,  the 
dances  were  so  short  and  the  intervals  provided  for 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         389 

the  solicitations  of  the  waiters  were  so  long  that  both 
girls  weaned  of  the  scene. 

On  Tenth  Avenue  they  at  last  found,  however,  a 
place  more  to  their  liking.  It  was  the  usual  type  of 
room,  enlarged  by  tearing  out  the  thin  partitions 
that  had  once  divided  it  into  several  tenements.  The 
lights  shone  sick  through  the  clouding  smoke,  and 
the  air  was  heavy  with  the  odors  of  dust,  tobacco, 
alcohol,  and  sweat.  But  the  music  was  lively,  the 
floor  crowded,  and  the  little  tables  along  the  walls 
were  surrounded  by  laughing  groups  of  drinking 
men  and  women.  Of  the  former,  though  most  were 
hollow-chested,  pale-cheeked,  hawk-nosed,  some 
showed  clearly  that  they  came  to  plunder;  and  if  the 
majority  of  the  latter  were  gum-chewing  working- 
girls  still  in  their  earliest  teens,  many  were  of  the 
variety  to  which  the  two  newcomers  now  belonged. 

Mary  and  her  companion  sat  down  at  a  table 
near  the  door.  They  nodded  to  the  burly,  cigar- 
smoking  "  Boss,"  who  moved  energetically  about, 
urging  bloodless  lads  to  find  partners,  and  now  and 
then  himself  taking  a  turn  with  a  neglected  girl. 
They  exchanged  familiar  greetings,  though  they  had 
never  before  seen  her,  with  the  false-jeweled  woman 
whose  business  it  was  to  assist  the  boss  in  stimulating 
the  dancers  by  precept  and  example.  And  they 
watched  the  scene  with  a  gaze  grave  and  calculating. 

Here  a  child  of  thirteen,  with  closed  eyes  and  her 
peach-tinted  cheek  against  her  pimpled  partner's,  un 
dulated  to  the  music,  scarcely  moving  her  feet. 
Nearby  there  whirled,  like  a  dervish,  a  girl  to  whose 
consumptive  face  the  revolutions  brought  a  glow 
that  mimicked  health.  Now  and  then  a  woman 


390         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

would  leap  from  one  of  the  tables,  embrace  an  un 
embarrassed  man  about  the  neck  and  so  waltz  off 
with  him,  at  once  passionate  and  mocking,  both  of 
them  deaf  to  the  plaudits  of  their  spectators.  From 
time  to  time  the  lights  were  suddenly  extinguished, 
and  the  dance  went  on  in  the  darkness  amid  a  chorus 
of  kisses,  cries,  and  giggling.  Most  of  the  boys  and 
men,  and  nearly  all  of  the  little  girls,  were  drunk. 

Among  the  dancers,  doubtless  plying  his  trade, 
Mary  saw  Rafael  Angelelli,  sleek  and  radiant  in  a 
new  suit  of  pale  buff.  He  detected  her  a  little  later 
and,  disposing  of  a  pure-faced  child,  who  had  been 
in  his  arms,  made  a  skillful  way  to  his  old  acquaint 
ance.  He  shook  Mary's  reluctant  hand  and,  nod 
ding  to  Carrie  as  if  she  were  a  familiar  friend,  sat 
down  between  the  two  women. 

"  Where  you  been?  "  he  affably  inquired  of  Mary. 

"  Out  of  town,"  said  Mary,  coldly. 

Angel  shrugged  his  shoulders.  He  knew  she  lied, 
but  he  rarely  contradicted  a  lady. 

"  Meester  Dyk'  been  lookin'  all  over  theesa  town 
for  you,  Violet,"  he  said. 

Mary  did  not  like  the  news.  She  was  still  afraid 
that  she  might  be  wanted  in  connection  with  her  con 
tradictory  affidavits. 

Angel,  however,  readily  reassured  her.  Just  what 
Dyker  wanted  he  did  not,  he  said,  know ;  but  he  was 
certain  that  it  was  something  for  her  benefit.  The 
magistrate  had  commissioned  him  to  find  her,  and 
Angel  had  been  searching,  sporadically,  for  several 
weeks,  even  tracing  her  course  back  to  the  employ 
ment-agency  and  to  that  Mrs.  Turner's  where  she 
had  first  worked.  « 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         391 

f£  Theesa  woman  say  you  steal,"  said  the  Italian. 

"  She's  a  liar,"  answered  Mary,  hotly. 

"  She  say  she  toP  you  so." 

"  She  tried  to  make  out  I  took  a  cake  of  soap." 

"  But  she  say  after  you  leave  she  meess  two  dollar 
an'  some  silka  stockin'." 

"  That  woman  never  wore  no  silk  stockin's  in  her 
life,  an'  there  wasn't  two  dollars  in  the  house." 

Again  the  Italian  shrugged  his  shoulders.  He 
gave  Mary  to  understand  that,  in  his  opinion,  any 
woman  who  could  steal  and  did  not  was  a  fool,  and 
that  any  woman  who  stole  and  acknowledged  it  was 
a  worse  fool.  But  what,  plainly,  most  interested  him 
was  the  execution  of  his  commission  from  Dyker. 
He  talked  so  earnestly  about  it  that  he  failed  entirely 
to  lay  Mary's  fears.  She  refused  to  give  him  her 
address,  and  as  soon  as  he  had  left  the  table  she 
endeavored  to  quit  the  hall. 

The  entrance  of  an  acquaintance  detained  her. 
There  were  words  that  had  to  be  said  and  drinks 
that  had  to  be  bought.  Half  an  hour  passed,  and 
then,  as  she  started  with  Carrie  for  the  door,  Mary 
saw  Wesley  Dyker  standing  outside.  He  was 
wrapped  in  a  heavy  overcoat  with  its  military  collar 
turned  up  about  his  chin  and  his  black  derby  pulled 
far  over  his  eyes;  but  Mary  feared  him  too  much 
to  fail  of  recognition. 

"  There  he  is!  "  she  whispered,  catching  her  com 
panion's  arm.  "  The  Dago  telephoned  him.  I  was 
afraid  of  that." 

Escape  was  hopeless.  She  sent  Carrie  back  to 
the  dancers,  and,  going  out,  met  Dyker,  her  head 
erect. 


392         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I  heard  you  was  lookin'  for  me,"  she  said. 

Wesley  raised  his  hat. 

"  Yes,"  he  said  dryly;  "  walk  a  block  or  two  with 


me." 


They  went  for  some  time  in  silence,  Mary  too 
much  upon  the  defensive  to  risk  beginning  a  con 
versation,  and  Dyker  trying  in  vain  to  command  the 
anger  that  had  been  growing  with  every  day  since 
he  had  learned  how  she  had  betrayed  him  to  Marian. 
At  the  first  dark  street  into  which  he  turned  her, 
his  resentment  burst  its  guard. 

"  What  in  hell  do  you  mean  by  telling  everybody 
all  you  know  about  me?  "  he  demanded. 

Mary  shrank  away. 

"  No,  you  don't !  "  he  said,  and  seized  her  hand. 
"  Didn't  I  do  you  the  best  turn  that  was  ever  done 
you?" 

"  Yes,"  the  woman  quavered.  "  An'  I  wouldn't 
pay  you  back  the  way  you  say  I  done.  I  never  talked 
about  you  to  nobody." 

"  Don't  lie.     You  know  you  did." 

Mary  remembered,  but  she  shook  her  head  deter 
minedly. 

"  I've  never  once  spoke  your  name,"  she  said. 

"I  tell  you  to  stop  lying!"  rejoined  Dyker. 
"  You  told  it  once  at  the  Settlement  on  Rivington 
Street.  I  know  it.  I  learned  it  there  myself." 

"  What  did  I  tell?  "  asked  Mary.  Her  tone  was 
defiant,  but  her  endeavor  was  to  draw  his  fire. 

They  walked  forward. 

"  You  said  I  hung  out  at  Rose's,"  he  protested. 
"  You  said  I  was  her  lover  and  yours." 

"  I  never  said  I  had  nothing  to  do  wrth  you,  Mr. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         393 

Dyker.  I  don't  care  who  told  you  I  did;  I  never 
said  no  such  thing." 

"  You  said  I  went  to  Rose's.     I  know  you  did." 

She  confessed  to  that,  for  she  was  truly  sorry  for 
it. 

"  But  I  didn't  mean  to,  Mr.  Dyker,"  she  added; 
"  honest,  I  didn't.  It  just  slipped  out.  I  didn't 
know  Miss  Marian  knowed  you.  Why,  she  told 
me  she  didn't  know  you,  an'  how'd  I  ever  think  she'd 
lie?" 

That  was  a  question  which,  ignorant  of  Miss  Len 
nox's  precise  method  of  evasion,  Wesley  did  not, 
even  to  himself,  attempt  to  answer. 

"  It  didn't  matter  whether  she  knew  me  or  not," 
he  said;  "you  had  no  right  to  tell  it." 

"  I  know  that.  It  just  slipped  out.  But  it  won't 
never  happen  again.  I  wasn't  so  wise  as  I  am 
now." 

"  I  hope  not,"  he  said,  a  trifle  mollified  by  the 
sincerity  in  her  tone.  "  But  you've  done  me  a  big 
amount  of  harm  there,  Violet,  and  you  have  got  to 
undo  it." 

Her  first  sensation  had  been  one  of  relief  in  find 
ing  that  her  false  affidavit  was  not  held  against  her; 
her  next  had  been  fright  at  his  anger;  but  now  she 
was  all  penitence  for  the  ill  she  had  wrought  him. 
Dyker  was  the  one  man  in  New  York  that  had  done 
her  a  kindness,  and  she  held  that  kindness  as  the 
greatest  possible. 

"  What  do  you  want?  "  she  asked.  "  I'd  do  most 
anything  for  you,  Mr.  Dyker:  you  know  that." 

They  were  under  the  uncertain  light  of  a  crossing. 
He  eyed  her  narrowly,  mistrustingly. 


394         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I  want  you,"  he  replied,  "  to  come  to  my  office 
to-morrow  evening  at  six.  Here's  my  card.  Will 
you  do  it?  " 

She  took  the  card  and  thrust  it  through  the  open 
ing  of  her  shirtwaist. 

"  What  do  you  want  with  me  when  you  get  me 
there?"  she  wondered. 

"  I  want  you  to  come  with  me  to  Miss  Lennox, 
and  deny  the  story  that  you  told  her  about  me." 

Mary's  heart  sank.  She  could  not  bear  the 
thought  of  facing  Marian. 

"What's  the  use  o'  that?"  she  pleaded. 

"What's  the  use?  Why,  how  else  are  you  going 
to  put  me  right  with  her?  " 

"  But  I  couldn't." 

"  You  must." 

"  I  couldn't,  Mr.  Dyker.  Honest,  I  couldn't. 
She'd  know  I  was  lyin'  to  her." 

"  You  leave  that  to  me." 

"  What  excuse'd  I  give  her?  " 

"  We'll  fix  that  up  to-morrow." 

"  Please  don't  make  me  do  it,  Mr.  Dyker!  " 

"  I've  got  to.  What  else  can  I  do? — It's  all  your 
own  fault.  What's  your  address?  " 

She  gave  it  to  him  tremulously. 

"  All  right,"  he  said.  "  I'll  have  a  cab  there  for 
you  to-morrow  at  five-thirty." 

Her  body  shook  with  frightened  sobs. 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Dyker,"  she  repeated,  "  please  don't 
make  me  do  this!  I'd  do  anythin',  'most,  under  the 
sun  for  you;  but  I  can't  face  Miss  Marian — honest 
to  God,  I  can't." 

What  he  should  have  done  was  to  play  upon  her 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         395 

gratitude,  but  what  he  did  do  was  again  to  allow  his 
mistrust  and  anger  to  have  their  rein. 

"  I  won't  have  any  nonsense  about  this,  Violet," 
he  said.  "  If  you  don't  come  to  my  office  to-morrow 
at  six,  I'll  have  you  arrested — and  I'll  see  to  it  that 
you  won't  escape  with  a  mere  fine,  either." 

"  It  won't "  She  could  not  grasp  it.  "  What 

do  you  mean?  "  she  asked. 

"  I  mean  I'll  have  you  arrested  on  a  big 
charge." 

Her  lips  stiffened  with  that  common  terror  of  the 
law,  about  the  only  terror  that  the  law  ever  succeeds 
nowadays  in  creating:  the  unreasoning  terror  that 
seldom  serves  as  a  deterrent. 

"  I  ain't  done  nothin'  but  this,"  she  said,  in  the 
full  knowledge  that  what  she  had  or  had  not  done 
would  be  no  factor  in  the  problem. 

"  You'll  find  out  about  that  when  the  time  comes," 
he  answered.  "  What  I  want  to  know  is  whether 
you'll  do  me  this  favor  or  not." 

He  had  stopped  and  confronted  her.  Even  in  the 
semi-darkness  her  anxious  eyes  managed  to  read  his 
pale,  determined  face,  but  even  in  the  daylight  they 
could  have  found  there  no  relenting. 

She  gave  him  a  despairing  smile. 

"  I  guess  I've  got  to,"  she  said. 

"  Yes,  you'll  have  to." 

"  All  right." 

"You'll  do  it?" 

"  I'll  do  it,  all  right." 

"No  bluff?" 

"  No." 

"  Remember:  if  you  don't,  I'll  fix  you." 


396         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Mary  turned  away. 

"  I'll  not  forget,"  she  said. 

"  If  you  don't,"  he  called  after  her,  "  you  won't 
be  sorry." 

"  I  won't  forget,"  she  repeated. 
.  And  yet,  even  as  she  walked  away  from  him,  the 
sickness  of  indecision  was  upon  her.  Like  all  narrow 
experiences,  her  narrow  experience  made  her  afraid 
of  everything  beyond  its  own  limits.  Her  habit  of 
life  was  the  habit  of  the  weakened  bird  of  prey  that 
attacks  only  the  defenseless  and  flies  before  the 
strong.  She  had  become  a  moral  coward,  and  the 
progress  of  her  physical  disease  directly  accentuated 
the  insidious  encroachments  of  her  moral  illness.  She 
could  not  openly  face  Marian;  she  did  not  dare 
openly  to  defy  Dyker.  She  wanted  only  to  run 
away. 

By  four  o'clock  the  next  afternoon  she  had  run 
away.  The  night  had  been  a  wearisome  journey 
backward  and  forward  between  the  decision  to  obey 
the  magistrate  and  the  decision  to  evade  him.  She 
thought  that  she  owed  him  much,  but  she  knew  that 
she  could  not  successfully  face  Marian  and  lie.  She 
was  tremblingly  afraid  of  Wesley's  vengeance,  but 
she  was  more  afraid  of  Marian's  honest  eyes.  All 
day  she  lay  upon  her  bed,  dizzy  from  this  circling 
process  of  thought,  but  at  last,  in  an  attack  of  dread 
of  the  lie  more  severe  than  any  that  had  preceded 
it,  she  flung  her  clothes  into  a  little  trunk,  which  she 
had  recently  purchased,  and,  calling  a  cab,  drove  to  a 
new  lodging-house. 

She  did  not  go  out  that  evening,  but  the  next  she 
had  to  go,  and  she  had  not  been  on  Broadway  for 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         397 

two  hours  before  a  plain-clothes  man  touched  her 
arm. 

"  I'm  sorry,  kid,"  he  said,  "  but  you've  got  to 
come  along  with  me." 

Instinctively  she  recoiled,  but  the  detective's  fin 
gers  had  slipped  to  her  wrist  and  tightened  on  it. 
The  sword  had  fallen. 

"Where  to?"  she  asked. 

She  knew  the  man.  She  had  given  him  money, 
and  more  than  money,  yet  she  expected  no  mercy, 
expected  nothing  but  an  explanation. 

"  Jefferson  Market,"  said  her  captor.  "  But  if 
you've  got  anybody  handy  who'll  go  your  bail,  I'll 
take  you  to  see  him  first,  before  we  go  down  to 
Ninth  Street." 

Mary  shook  her  head.  Helpless  horror  had  her 
for  its  own. 

"  No  use,"  she  answered. 

"Are  you  sure?"  he  asked. 

"  Certain  sure,"  she  said,  and  then,  a  little  wist 
fully:  "  I  guess  there  ain't  no  good  in  tryin'  to  talk 
business  to  you?  " 

The  detective  was  a  big,  black-mustached  man. 
His  face  was  not  unkindly,  but  he  was  helpless. 

"No,"  he  said;  "this  here's  orders  from  the 
front.  If  you  haven't  got  some  fellow  to  be  ready 
with  bail,  I  guess  we'd  better  hurry  up." 

They  crossed  to  Sixth  Avenue  and  walked  down 
that  noisy  thoroughfare  to  the  towering  brick  for 
tress  that  stands  like  a  castle  to  guard  the  gateway 
of  old  Greenwich  Village. 

By  day  that  somber  building  seems  to  hide  behind 
the  grim  planks  of  the  elevated  railroad;  it  is  ugly, 


398         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

neglected,  innocent;  under  its  protecting  wings  are 
the  stalls  of  white-aproned  butchers  and  the  open 
establishments  of  green-grocers  and  hucksters  plying 
their  several  occupations.  But  no  sooner  does  the 
darkness  drop  its  curtain  over  the  webbed  streets,  the 
dirty  courts,  and  the  foul  alleys  that  surround  the 
place,  than  Jefferson  Market  ceases  to  be  a  building 
for  the  dispensation  of  food  and  becomes  a  court 
for  the  dispensation  of  the  commodity  that  we  care 
lessly  label  Justice.  The  hands  of  the  large  clock 
in  the  high  tower  are  hurried  toward  the  hour  of 
twelve;  long  rays  of  sinister  light  are  shot  from 
windows  narrow  and  barred;  and  under  a  vaulted 
entrance-way  there  pours,  from  year's  end  to  year's 
end,  an  unending  army  of  those  women  of  the  street 
who  have  lost,  for  one  reason  or  another,  their  ability 
any  longer  to  purchase  the  protection  of  the  Law. 

It  is  not  often  that  what  the  statutes  designate  as 
crime  comes  to  the  Night  Court :  Crime  may  wait  for 
the  morning.  It  is  the  drunkard,  the  vagrant,  the 
licenseless  pedlar,  and,  above  all,  unfriended  Maria 
Peripatetica,  the  human  being  that  humanity  has 
spoiled  in  the  making,  who  is  taken  there.  Above 
all,  the  Mariae  Peripateticae  that  have,  once  fostered 
by  the  Law,  quarreled  with  it,  failed  to  bribe  it,  or 
openly  rebelled  against  it.  Black  and  white,  short- 
skirted  and  gray-haired,  besilked  and  bedraggled, 
from  nine  in  the  evening  until  early  morning,  five 
thousand  in  a  twelvemonth,  they  are  brought  to  the 
Jefferson  Market  Court  for  judgment  from  the 
power  that  has  made  them  what  they  are. 

And  judgment  is  what  they  receive.  The  law  is 
a  mill  that  was  made  to  grind  out  one  thing,  and 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         399 

can  grind  no  other;  the  courts  were  constituted  to 
make  criminals  and  to  punish  them,  not  to  prevent 
or  to  cure;  our  present  justice  is  not  mercy;  it  is 
formulae,  not  sentiment.  There  is  one  woman  that 
has  some  small  authority  in  this  tribunal,  one  woman 
that  sees  an  occasional  girl  with  some  promise  in 
her  face  and  takes  her  away  to  Waverley  House  for 
observation  and  to  be  given,  if  all  goes  well,  a  chance 
at  other  employment;  but  Waverley  House  is  small, 
it  is  poor,  and  there  is  small  chance  for  her  that  has 
been  twice  stricken.  One  woman  cannot  do  much 
against  the  grinding  mill,  and  the  grinding  mill,  be 
tween  January  and  December,  sends  only  seventeen 
girls  to  a  semi-sane  reformatory  as  compared  to 
three  thousand  that  it  sends  to  the  university  of 
crime  which  is  known  as  "  The  Island." 

Mary  was  hurried  up  a  short  flight  of  stone  steps 
and  into  a  small  hallway.  A  metal  gate  was  opened 
for  her  and  snapped  shut  as  she  passed  it.  A  stocky 
man  took  her  name  and  address  and  got,  from  her 
conductor,  in  a  voice  that  she  could  not  hear,  the 
charge  on  which  she  had  been  arrested,  and  then, 
after  one  turn  to  the  left  and  another  to  the  right, 
she  was  shoved  through  a  door  and  into  a  brightly- 
lighted,  heavily-barred  detention-pen. 

Dazedly,  she  looked  about.  Beside  her,  upon  one 
side,  sat  a  gray-haired  woman  of  sixty,  too  old  any 
longer  to  earn  that  tribute  which  would  have  secured 
her  immunity  for  the  prosecution  of  the  trade  she 
must  recently  have  adopted.  Nearby  was  a  girl  of 
thirteen,  who,  temporarily  neglected  by  her  owner, 
had  been  arrested  for  the  same  offense.  On  the 
bench  sat  a  fat  negress  who  informed  all  listeners 


400         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

that  she  was  falsely  charged  with  picking  the  pocket 
of  a  bald-headed  white  man  that  she  had  solicited. 
Over  them  all  streamed  the  pitiless  light  of  strong 
lamps,  upon  them  all  were  soon  to  feast  the  eyes  of 
the  crowd  in  the  near  court-room. 

The  newcomer  bowed  her  head.  She  did  not 
know  that  a  court-retainer  had  been  waiting  her  arri 
val.  She  did  not  know  that,  as  soon  as  she  had 
entered,  this  retainer  had  hurried  to  a  telephone. 
She  did  not  know  that,  in  answer  to  this  call,  Rafael 
Angelelli  had  hurried  to  the  door  that  she  had  just 
passed,  and  there  presented  a  note  bearing  a  potent 
signature.  She  did  not  even  know  that  these  things 
were  of  common  enough  occurrence,  and  she  was 
aware  of  only  her  misery  until  she  heard  the  Italian's 
low  voice  and  saw  him  beckoning  her  to  the  bars. 

She  almost  ran  toward  him.  The  other  prisoners 
gathered  about  her,  but  the  officer  that  accompanied 
Angel  waved  them  away,  and  himself  drew  back. 
Mary  clutched  the  bars  as  if  they  had  been  a  tangible 
hope. 

"  Angel !  "  she  whispered. 

But  Angelelli  fronted  her,  scowling.  He  shook 
a  tight  fist  under  her  shrinking  eyes. 

"  You  are  a  dam'  fool  1  "  he  answered. 

Mary  could  not  articulate.  Her  lips  involuntarily 
found  an  unthought  query,  but  her  voice  was  dumb. 

"  Why  you  not  leesten  to  theesa  Wesley  Dyk'  ?  " 
pursued  Rafael.  "  Now  maybe  you  go  to  the  Island. 
You  know  what  that  mean?  Theesa  jailers  cut  off 
your  hair,  beat  you  up  every  mornin',  every  evenin' 
regular.  No  meals;  only  bread  an'  water;  no  whees- 
key.  An'  when  you  come  out  every  cop  hava  you' 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         401 

peecture  an'  you  get  arrest'  each  time  an'  senta  back 
again  to  jail!  " 

She  believed  him.  She  would  have  believed  any 
thing  that  was  said  to  her  by  someone  she  had  pre 
viously  known.  With  a  flow  of  ready  tears  that 
blinded  her  sunken  eyes,  she  begged  him  to  tell  her 
of  some  way  of  escape. 

Angel  was  ready  with  his  answer.  It  seemed  that 
he  still  represented  Wesley  Dyker  and  that  Mr. 
Dyker  was  not  disposed  to  be  so  hard  on  her  as  im 
partial  justice  demanded  that  he  should  be.  In  the 
back-room  of  a  nearby  saloon  there  were  a  lawyer 
and  a  notary  in  waiting.  If  Mary  would  promise 
to  swear  to  and  sign  before  them  a  prepared  paper 
denying  the  accusations  she  had  made  to  Marian, 
Angel  would  now,  by  means  of  a  second  note,  see 
that  the  sitting  magistrate  did  but  fine  her,  and 
would  hand  her  at  once  the  amount  of  that  fine. 

She  had  supposed  that  her  arrest  had  been  on  the 
charge  of  larceny  from  Mrs.  Turner's  boarding- 
house;  she  had  not  known  that  she  was  accused  of 
no  more  than  the  practice  of  her  trade,  and  she  could 
scarcely  credit  news  so  good  as  this  which  Angel 
brought  her. 

"  An'  I  won't  have  to  go  to  Miss  Marian?  "  she 
asked. 

"  No.  Meest'  Dyk'  want  thees  paper  for  hees 
girl — jus'  to  square  heemself  witha  hees  girl — no 
more.  You  go  where  you  want." 

"An'  the  judge'll  let  me  off  ?  " 

11  Right  away." 

She  promised,  and  a  moment  later  was  led  into 
ihe  court-room. 


402         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

She  saw  the  gaping,  leering  crowd,  which  filled 
half  of  that  apartment  beyond  the  low  grating.  She 
saw  the  stolid  policemen  herding  their  charges  as 
stockyard  hands  herd  cattle  for  the  slaughter.  She 
saw  the  stealthy  slavers  buzzing  in  and  out,  bent 
upon  nefarious  rescue;  the  waiting  lawyers  on  the 
outer  bench  and  the  laughing  lawyers  inside,  joking 
together  or  making  mirth  before  the  desk  at  which, 
in  his  black  robe,  sat  the  weary,  cynical,  indifferent 
magistrate,  his  face  as  expressionless  as  that  of  a 
Chinese  Joss.  She  heard,  between  the  roars  of  ele 
vated  trains,  the  unintelligible  oaths,  administered, 
as  she  now  understood  that  the  average  oath  is  ad 
ministered,  with  a  rapidity  that  robbed  them  of  all 
dignity  and  most  effect;  the  drone  of  testimony  con 
stantly  interrupted  to  the  point  of  confusion  and 
always  curtailed  to  the  exclusion  of  essential  truth; 
the  mechanical  pronouncement  of  sentence  that  ended, 
as  if  the  two  things  were  on  phrase,  in  the  summoning 
of  the  succeeding  case.  All  this  she  saw  and  heard 
and  disregarded.  She  had  been  struck  down,  trapped, 
held  fast  in  the  grip  of  the  invisible  enemy  that  she 
thought  of  as  the  City.  She  had  been  conscious  of 
nothing  but  the  living  Fear,  and  now,  Angel  had  told 
her,  some  portion  of  relief  was  at  hand. 

Her  arraignment,  the  payment  of  her  fine,  her 
meeting  with  the  waiting  Italian,  her  progress  to 
the  nearby  saloon  where  the  lawyer  and  the  notary 
were  ready  for  her — all  this  passed  like  a  vision  of 
the  night.  She  signed  without  reading  it — though 
she  would  not  have  understood  it  if  she  had  read  it 
— the  formal  denial  to  which  her  affirmation  was 
immediately  affixed.  She  was  too  dazed  to  think 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         403 

until,  leaving  the  three  smiling  men  behind  her,  she 
had  turned  again  into  free  Sixth  Avenue. 

It  was  then  that  she  saw  coming  toward  her  a 
young  man — a  young  man  that  might  have  been  any 
where  from  nineteen  to  thirty-two — with  hair  that 
was  dark  and  curly,  sorely-shaven  olive  cheeks  just 
showing  the  defeated  tokens  of  a  blue-black  beard; 
a  dapper,  prosperous  young  man,  with  thick  lips  and 
hard  eyes  and  a  smartly  cut  overcoat,  from  one  pocket 
of  which  flashed  a  brilliant-bordered  handkerchief. 

In  the  instant  Mary's  exhaustion  dropped  from 
her  brain  and  shoulders.  She  forgot  her  fright  of 
the  earlier  evening;  she  remembered  only  the  suffer 
ings  from  which  it  had  arisen.  Her  waiting  had 
not,  after  all,  been  vain.  She  was  calm,  she  was 
resourceful,  she  was  resolved. 

"  Hello,  Max,"  she  said. 


XXVII 

JUDGMENT 

A  first  he  did  not  know  her.  He  stood  there, 
while  their  eyes  were  locked,  in  his  own  eyes 
no  gleam  of  honest  memory.  He  was  un 
changed — the  serene,  the  secure,  the  smug  Max 
Grossman  of  that  first  meeting  in  the  street  of  her 
little  Pennsylvania  town;  but  she,  as  she  so  well 
knew  without  this  silent  testimony,  was  not  now,  and 
never  again  could  be,  the  girl  of  that  lost  spring 
time.  He  looked  at  her,  his  thick  lips  drawn  thin 
in  a  professional  grimace,  and  not  until  she  spoke 
a  second  time  did  he  recognize  her. 

He  started  then,  and  his  olive  face  went  pale;  but 
Mary  put  out  her  hand  precisely  as  if  she  were  meet 
ing,  after  a  brief  absence,  only  an  acquaintance  of 
the  everyday  friendly  sort,  and  Max,  too  glad  for 
pardon  to  question  motive,  seized  and  squeezed  her 
hand  tenderly. 

"  Vhat?"  he  cried  in  mock  pleasure  at  this  con 
tretemps.  "  No,  it  ain'df  I  gan't  hardly  belief  mine 
eyes  you're  lookin'  so  fine.  But  it  is  Mary  Den 
bigh  1" 

She  smiled  almost  gayly.  In  little  she  had  to  lie, 
but  in  much,  though  for  a  reason  that  he  must  not 
suspect,  she  was  indeed  exultant. 

"  I  am  lookin'  good,  ain't  I,  Max?  "  she  said. 

He  surveyed  her  cheap  finery;  saw  her  hair,  dis- 

404 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         405 

ordered  in  her  passage  through  the  crowded  court 
room,  and  turned  his  gaze  quickly  from  her  hollow, 
painted  cheeks,  her  hardening  carmine  mouth,  and 
her  heavily  ringed  eyes. 

"  You're  grand,"  he  said.  "  I  always  knew  you'd 
make  good,  Mary." 

"You  jollier!"  she  laughed,  and  with  her  free 
hand,  patted  his  olive  cheek. 

"  No,  it's  lowest,  so  help  me." 

"  Then  don't  you  want  to  buy  me  a  drink,  Max?  " 

Grossman  dropped  her  hand.  His  face  grew 
doubtful. 

"  I  vish  I  had  dime"  he  said,  "  but  I  god  to  see 
a  friend  down  the  Avenue,  an' " 

"A  lady,  Max?" 

"  Ach,  no,  Mary." 

"  Then  let  him  go.  You  ought  to  be  glad  to  take 
a  walk  with  as  good-lookin'  a  girl  as  you  say  I 
am." 

For  another  fleeting  instant  Max  let  his  eyes  rest 
on  her  face,  then  lowered  them.  He  looked  at  the 
pavement  and  drew  an  awkward  line  upon  it  with 
the  edge  of  his  tan  boot-sole.  More  significant  than 
any  physical  change  in  her  was  the  fact  that  she  could 
now  embarrass  him. 

"I  know,  Mary,"  he  stammered;  "but,  you  see, 
this  here  feller  vhat  I  toP " 

She  laughed  again.  She  thrust  her  arm  through 
his  and  turned  his  face  uptown. 

"  Forget  it !  "  she  said.  "  Don't  you  worry,  Max; 
I  ain't  goin'  to  rake  things  up,  if  that's  what's  sour 
ing  you.  Life's  too  short.  All  I  want  is  a  talk  and 
a  drink." 


406         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Half  reluctantly,  he  let  her  lead  him;  but  she 
could  lead  him  and  that  sufficed  her. 

He  lit  an  American  cigarette  and  puffed  it  nerv 
ously. 

"  I've  just  been  in  there,"  she  said,  with  a  back 
ward  jerk  of  her  head  in  the  direction  of  the  police- 
court. 

"  There?  "  Max  was  not  surprised,  but  he  added : 
"  Vhat  vas  you  doin'  in  there?  " 

"What  do  you  think?"  responded  Mary.  She 
herself  was  thinking  rapidly — about  other  things. 

"  You  vasn't  in  drouble?  " 

"  I  guess  you  would  call  it  that." 

"Pinched?" 

"  Yes." 

He  had  asked  her  no  questions  about  her 
past — but  concerning  her  present  he  chanced  a 
query. 

"  Mary,"  he  inquired,  "  do  you  mean  they  god 
you  up  fer  your  beesiness?  " 

"  That's  about  it,"  she  said. 

"  But  vhy  don't  you  square  you'self  vith  the  gop- 
pers?" 

"  I  don't  know.    I — I  was  broke,  Max." 

"  I  vish  I  gould  help  you,  Mary,"  he  said,  his 
curiosity  cooling  at  the  thought  of  an  appeal  for 
assistance. 

She  saw  it,  and  it  amused  her. 

"  Can't  you  do  it?  "  she  asked,  dropping  her  voice 
into  a  whine. 

He  tried  to  draw  away  from  her,  but  her  linked 
arm  held  him  affectionately  fast. 

"I  been  havin'  rotten  luck,"  he  declared;  "some- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         407 

thin'  awful.  I  ain't  got  hardly  only  the  money  vhat's 
in  my  glothes." 

"  Well,  then,"  said  Mary,  looking  at  the  clothes 
and  knowing  well  that  they  somewhere  concealed  an 
ample  yellow  sum,  "  why  don't  you  take  me  on  your 
staff?" 

"  Mary,"  he  cried,  trying  to  spread  his  hands,  and 
failing  dismally  with  the  one  that  her  pinioning  arm 
hampered,  "  vhat  do  you  think  I  am?  A  million 
aire?  I  ain't  got  no  staff." 

"  Come  off !  "  she  bantered. 

"  I  ain't— honest." 

"Still  in  the  other  line?"  she  persisted.  "I 
thought  you  might  be  trottin'  'em  on  the  street — 
they  say  there's  more  in  it.  Why  do  you  stick  to 
supplyin'  the  flats  and  the  houses?" 

Her  voice  was  the  perfection  of  good  nature,  but 
he  writhed  under  it. 

"Mary!  "he  pleaded. 

"  Well,"  she  said,  disregarding  his  tone,  and  keep 
ing  his  arm  fast  in  her  own,  "  you  do  supply  'em, 
don't  you?  I  know  one  fellow  who  makes  his  livin' 
goin'  the  rounds,  findin'  what  girls  is  sore  on  their 
madams  an'  then  gettin'  a  commission  by  sneakin' 
'em  out  an'  changin'  'em  to  new  flats.  He  lets  on 
he's  sellin'  kimonas,  but  one  sample's  lasted  him  three 
years." 

"  Mary !  "  repeated  Max,  more  weakly. 

"  That's  the  truth,"  she  said,  and  then :  "  But 
can't  you  start  street-work  an'  take  me  on  your 
staff?" 

Again  he  looked  at  her. 

"  No,"  he  answered. 


4o8         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Not  young  enough  lookin1  now,  eh?  "  She  was 
still  smiling. 

"  Ach,"  he  protested,  "  you  oughtn't  nod  to  be 
so  hard  on  a  feller.  If  you  chust  knowed " 

But  she  had  gone  far  enough,  and  she  would  not 
let  him  finish.  They  had  reached  a  saloon  near  to 
her  new  lodging-place,  and  she  paused.  There  was, 
and  she  knew  it,  no  word  in  his  excuse  that  she  would 
have  credited.  Nor  did  she  mean,  just  yet,  to  let 
him  see  her  hatred.  In  order  that  he  might  the 
better  see  it  at  a  later  moment,  she  wanted  now  to 
quiet  his  naturally  ready  fears.  She  had  found  that 
she  could  harass  him,  and  that,  for  the  present,  was 
all  that  she  needed  to  know. 

"  Never  mind,"  she  said,  "  I  told  you  I  wasn't 
goin'  to  rake  up  nothin',  an'  I  mean  to  keep  my  word. 
Come  on  in  here.  This  is  a  quiet  place.  You're 
goin'  to  buy  me  a  drink,  anyhow,  just  to  show  that 
we're  still  friends." 

He  brightened  at  this  indicated  avenue  of  escape. 

"  Sure  we're  still  friends,"  he  declared,  "  an'  you 
can  haf  all  you  vant  to  drink,  too." 

She  slipped  her  hand  into  his — she  could  do  it, 
she  had  learned,  without  the  dumb  flesh  seeming  to 
shrink  from  that  contact — and  pressed  it. 

They  went  into  the  deserted  "  ladies'  room  "  of 
the  saloon  to  which  she  had  referred,  and  sat  down 
there,  facing  each  other  under  a  light  turned  kindly 
low. 

"Vhiskey?"  asked  Max. 

"  Yes,"  said  Mary. 

'  Two  of  'em,"  ordered  Max  of  the  waiter 
that  had  answered  his  ring,  "  an'  don'd  make 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         409 

'em  so  stingy  like  most  you  fellers  ofer  this 
vay." 

The  man  brought  the  liquor,  placed  it  before 
them,  and  went  away. 

"  Veil,"  said  Max,  raising  his  glass,  smiling  his 
thin  smile,  and  apparently  forgetting  that  he  had 
ever  denied  whiskey;  "  here  ve  are,  ain't  it?  " 

If  Mary  was  remembering  another  night  and  an 
other  drink  she  did  not  say  so;  instead,  as  Max  tilted 
his  sleek  head  far  back  between  his  shoulders  and 
dropped  the  whiskey  down  his  throat,  her  hand 
watched  for  the  instant  when  his  gray  eyes  were  on 
the  ceiling  and  that  instant  poured  the  liquor  from 
her  own  glass  to  the  floor.  When  her  companion's 
head  came  forward  her  fingers,  wrapped  about  the 
glass,  were  just  withdrawing  it  from  her  lips. 

"  I  can  drink  that  better'n  I  used  to,"  she  said. 

Max  grinned  again.  So  long  as  she  did  not  up 
braid  him  for  his  part  in  it,  so  long  as  she  did  not 
go  into  the  details  of  its  earlier  stages,  he  had  no 
objection  to  hearing  of  her  past,  was  even  languidly 
curious  about  it,  and  was  certainly  sorry  that  it  had 
not  brought  her  to  more  seeming  prosperity. 

"  You  sure  didn't  take  that  like  you  vasn't  used 
vith  it,"  he  said. 

"  I'll  take  another  just  to  show  you  how,"  she 
answered,  and  pressed  the  nearest  button. 

This  time  his  eyes  were  on  her  and  she  had  to 
drink.  But  she  did  not  scruple:  so  long  as  she 
retained  her  head  and  Max  lost  his,  the  effect 
of  the  alcohol  on  her  system  concerned  her  but 
little. 

They  had  a  third  drink,  for  "  old  time's  sake,"  as 


4io         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Mary  suggested,  and  this  she  succeeded  in  pouring 
down  her  dress-front.  At  the  fourth,  Max  began 
to  show  signs  of  fear  that  he  would  have  a  drunken 
woman  on  his  hands,  but  Mary's  patent  sobriety  soon 
reassured  him,  and  overcame  his  protests  against  a 
fifth  by  recalling  his  promise  of  liberality. 

His  cold  eyes  sparkled  into  a  faint  light.  Little 
spots  of  red  appeared  in  the  olive  of  his  cheeks.  He 
felt  the  advance  of  the  enemy  in  his  veins  and  tried 
to  go;  but  Mary  began  an  imaginative  narrative  of 
her  recent  experiences  and  insisted  on  his  listening. 
When  he  at  last  successfully  interrupted  that,  she 
twitted  him  with  being  able  to  drink  less  than  his 
pupils,  and  Max  was  once  more  forced  to  order. 
He  was  not  drunk,  or  nearly  drunk,  but  the  fine 
edge  of  his  discretion  was  dulled:  he  saw  in  the 
woman,  who  had  now  moved  to  his  side,  nothing 
that,  whatever  motives  might  be  at  work,  could  pos 
sibly  harm  him;  he  found  something  ludicrous  in 
the  situation.  Her  looks  seemed  better  than  they 
had  appeared  an  hour  earlier,  and  her  tentative  ad 
vances  flattered  him. 

Mary,  though  she  had  drunk  more  than  was  good 
for  her,  had  managed  to  spill  enough  liquor  to  retain 
all  the  sobriety  she  needed;  but,  when  they  at  last 
rose,  she  swayed  a  little  unsteadily. 

"  Now,"  she  said,  "  you'll  just  buy  me  a  half-pint 
for  my  head  in  the  mornin',  an'  then  you'll  walk  as 
far  as  my  door." 

Still  enjoying  the  piquancy  of  the  affair,  he  obeyed 
her.  He  even  consented  to  come  to  her  hall-bedroom 
with  her — a  room  the  exact  reproduction  of  that 
which  she  had  formerly  rented  farther  uptown — and 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         411 

there,  forgetful  of  the  provision  against  the  morning, 
they  finished  the  half-pint. 

At  last  he  stood  up  from  the  bed  on  which  he  had 
been  sitting  while  she,  opposite,  used  the  single  chair. 

"Veil,"  he  said,  grinning;  "  it's  been  good  to  see 
you  again,  und  maybe  I'll  gome  back  some  efenin'." 

She  rose  before  him.  The  light  was  at  her  back 
and  her  face  resumed,  as  she  stood  there,  some  fur 
tive  traces  of  its  earlier  grace.  The  eyes  seemed  to 
soften,  the  cheeks  were  a  natural  pink  beneath  their 
coating  of  rouge,  and  her  russet  hair,  curling  about 
her  face,  relieved  the  harder  outlines  and  cast  a 
gentle  shadow  around  the  neck.  She  spread  out  her 
arms. 

"  Kiss  me,"  she  said. 

He  smiled  and  leaned  condescendingly  toward  her. 

"  What's  your  hurry?  "  she  murmured. 

He  looked  at  her,  and  the  weak  light  and  the 
strong  liquor  stood  her  in  good  stead. 

"  I  ain't  in  no  hurry,"  he  smiled. 

She  met  him  smile  for  smile — and  then,  in  a  sud 
den  sense  of  triumph,  she  flung  back  her  head  and 
laughed. 

It  was  not  until  three  hours  later  that  he  finally 
left  her,  but  he  left  hurriedly,  for  the  remorseless 
gray  light  of  morning  was  coming  in  at  the  window, 
and  it  fell  upon  her  as  she  wrapped  a  soiled  pink 
kimona  around  her  shivering  figure  and  slipped  her 
feet  into  a  pair  of  rundown  Turkish  slippers. 

"  Good-by,"  he  said,  looking  away  from  her. 

"  Wait  a  minute,"  said  Mary.  "  I'll  go  with  you 
to  the  door." 

She  did  go.     She  followed  him  down  the  dark 


4I2 

stairway,  creaking  noisily  under  their  shamed  feet, 
and  she  stood  for  a  moment  in  the  black  hall,  holding 
the  brass  knob  of  the  door,  as  he  passed  to  the  step 
outside.  Mary  slipped  the  dead-latch,  ready  to  bolt 
the  door. 

"  Max,"  she  said. 

He  turned  quickly,  nearly  knocking  over,  as  he 
did  so,  the  milk-bottles  that  were  lined,  in  a  white 
row,  upon  the  step. 

"Yes?"  he  returned,  and  grinned  sheepishly. 

She  thrust  out  her  towsled  head  and  looked  up 

and  down  the  gray  morning  street.    The  block  was 

empty.    She  drew  her  head  clear  of  the  door.     She 

was  still  trembling,  but  from  neither  cold  nor  fear. 

'  You  ain't  goin'  without  kissin'  me?  "  she  asked. 

But  a  reaction  of  disgust  had  seized  him. 

"  Yes,  I  am,"  he  said. 

Mary's  one  hand  tightened  on  the  knob ;  the  other 
flattened  itself  against  the  nearest  panel  of  the  door, 
ready  to  push  hard. 

"  All  right,"  she  replied,  with  a  sudden  change 
in  her  voice  that,  still  low,  became  tense  and  metallic. 
"  You  think  I'm — I'm  done  for,  Max.  Well — you're 
done  for,  too!  " 

The  man's  jaw  dropped.  His  olive  face  was 
ashen.  His  eyes  stared. 

"  What  do  you  mean?  "  he  asked. 

Mary's  mouth  was  wreathed  in  a  smile. 

"  You  know,"  she  answered. 

Max  retreated  so  suddenly  that  he  nearly  fell 
down  the  stone  steps. 

"  You've — you've "  he  gasped. 

"  Yes,"  said  Mary. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         413 

"  It's  a  lie !  You're  tryin'  to  scare  me !  "  His 
jaw  worked  spasmodically.  "  It's  a  .damned  lie !  " 
he  repeated. 

"  Yon  don't  believe  me?  "  the  girl  inquired. 

If  she  had  looked  for  heroics,  if  she  had  feared 
melodrama,  she  was  as  yet  disappointed.  The  knees 
of  Max  shook  under  him;  he  was  in  abject  terror. 

"  It's  a  lie,"  he  muttered  over  and  over.  "  It's 
a  damn'  lie !  " 

"  Think  what  you  please,"  said  Mary.  She  was 
still  smiling,  still  serene.  "  You  believed  I'd  forgot, 
didn't  you?  Well,  I  didn't  forget,  Max  Grossman, 
an'  now  you'll  remember.  If  you  don't  yet  think 
I'm  givin'  you  a  straight  story,  all  you  have  to  do 
is  just  one  thing :  wait." 

Max  uttered  an  inarticulate  cry  and  threw  him 
self  at  her,  but  he  only  bashed  his  head  against  the 
closed  door. 

Mary  had  shut  it,  and  in  time.  Behind  it,  in  the 
dark  hallway,  she  lay  half  fainting. 

"  It's  the  last  of  you,  Max,"  she  laughed. 

And  it  was. 


XXVIII 

HUSKS  OF  THE  SWINE 

ARY  was  too  ill  to  go  to  work  that  night, 
and  on  the  night  following  she  was  no 
better.  The  shock,  the  spasm  of  success, 
the  recoil,  not  moral  but  physical,  after  the  satisfac 
tion  of  a  supreme  desire — these  things  were,  of 
themselves,  enough  to  leave  her  prostrate.  But,  in 
addition  to  these,  she  had,  while  standing  at  that 
open  door,  contracted  one  of  those  heavy  colds  to 
which  she  was  now  rendered  especially  susceptible. 
Through  long  hours  of  the  day  and  the  darkness 
she  tossed  among  the  hot  sheets  of  her  bed,  some 
times  with  her  teeth  clicking  in  a  chill,  again  with 
her  body  burning  in  a  fever,  but  always  revolving 
in  her  seething  brain  the  details  of  the  vengeance  that 
she  had  wrought. 

Her  physical  sufferings  mattered  little  to  her. 
There  were  hours  when  she  was  wholly  incapable  of 
feeling  them.  When  the  inertia  of  the  state  of  re 
action  began  at  last  to  wear  away,  it  left  her  with 
a  glow  of  recollection  so  great  that  there  seemed 
no  place  for  lesser  sensation.  She  had  accomplished 
her  great  work,  she  had  achieved  her  mission.  What 
she  had  done  had  been  done  solely  for  her  own 
heart's  sake ;  there  had  been  no  delusion  of  a  celestial 
command,  no  distorted  thought  of  a  social  duty;  yet, 
the  impulse,  however  utilitarian,  had  been  supreme, 

414 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         415 

and  its  end  filled  her  with  a  sense  of  triumph  that, 
for  want  of  the  proper  title,  she  was  sure  was  happi 
ness. 

A  wiser  head  and  an  unwounded  heart  would  have 
known  enough  of  life  to  see  that  even  Max  Cross- 
man  was  not  entirely  to  blame.  A  better  brain  could 
have  looked  back  into  the  past.  It  could  have  seen 
Max  as  the  type  of  all  his  kind,  the  symbol  of  every 
one  of  the  great  company  of  slavers,  the  inevitable 
result  of  a  system  blind  both  to  its  own  interests 
and  to  the  interests  of  the  race.  It  could  have  seen 
the  child,  one  of  half  a  dozen  born  to  a  woman  that 
could  not,  properly,  have  cared  for  three.  It  could 
have  seen  that  child  neglected,  dirty,  forgotten, 
locked,  by  day,  in  the  bedroom  where  the  whole 
family  tried  vainly  to  sleep  by  night,  learning  the 
highest  facts  of  life  from  the  worst  of  teachers:  the 
cramped  childish  brain — and  going  out,  at  last,  upon 
the  street,  with  passions  prematurely  developed  and 
perverted.  It  could  have  seen  the  social  order  shape 
that  child  into  society's  enemy:  the  starved  boy-pick 
pocket  sent  to  the  monstrously  misnamed  "  reforma 
tory";  the  same  child  branded  as  a  criminal,  with 
none  to  shelter  or  to  trust  him,  and  with  a  knowl 
edge,  gained  in  the  state's  own  institution,  which 
fitted  him  to  be  only  a  crafty  gorilla  to  harass  the 
state.  It  could  have  seen  the  fatal  line  of  least  re 
sistance  as  clearly  in  the  resultant  man  as  it  is  seen 
in  the  life  of  him  that  does  no  more  than  wreck  a 
bank  or  steal  a  corporation,  and,  hideous  as  its 
course  is  in  the  one  instance,  it  would  have  seen  that 
the  line  was  the  same  in  all. 

But  Mary  never  doubted  her  justice,   and  never 


4i 6        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

regretted  it.  One  only  thought  troubled  her:  she 
was  afraid  that,  by  telling  Max,  she  might  have 
given  him  a  warning  sufficiently  early  to  defeat  her 
own  ultimate  purpose.  It  was  a  large  part  of  her 
plan  that  he  should  know  whose  hand  had  struck 
him,  and,  for  a  man  in  his  business,  the  only  way 
in  which  she  could  make  that  knowledge  certain  was 
the  way  that  she  had  followed.  Yet  what  if  he  were 
in  time  to  profit  by  her  information?  What  if,  even 
were  he  too  late,  he  should  guard  and  doctor  himself 
with  proper  caution?  She  turned  the  questions  over 
and  over  in  her  mind,  but  she  had  always  to  end  in 
the  faith  that  the  worst  had  happened. 

Sometimes,  in  the  moments  of  exhaustion  from 
the  mad  round  of  these  inquiries,  she  reverted  for 
relief  to  matters  that  touched  her  less  nearly, 
and  endeavored  to  occupy  herself  with  the  affairs 
of  others.  She  thought  of  Dyker,  and  without  re 
sentment.  She  knew  that  he  would  use  her  written 
retraction  to  regain  Marian's  confidence,  and  she 
hoped  that  he  would  be  successful.  Again  she  fell 
to  speculating  upon  the  fate  of  Carrie  Berkowicz 
and  to  wondering  what  had  become  of  Katie.  But 
upon  her  own  past  and  present  she  did  not  permit 
herself  to  dwell,  and  always,  with  the  certainty 
of  a  machine,  her  brain  recurred  to  Max  and  her 
vengeance  on  him. 

On  the  third  evening,  however,  her  landlady,  en 
tering  with  supper,  reminded  her,  without  mincing 
matters,  that  the  rent  was  due,  and  Mary  recalled 
that  her  little  stock  of  money  was  exhausted. 

"  Can  you  wait  till  to-morrow  morning,  Mrs. 
Foote  ?  "  she  asked. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         417 

Mrs.  Foote  was  an  ample  woman,  with  round 
cheeks  and  robust  frame,  whose  only  dissipations 
were  an  over-indulgence  in  ritualism,  babies,  and 
the  hospital.  She  had  a  high-church  cleric  to  whom 
she  confessed  the  sins  of  her  neighbors;  a  wraithlike 
husband  whose  sole  occupation  appeared  to  be  that 
indispensable  to  the  regular  increase  of  her  family 
— and  whom  she  would  otherwise  have  failed  alto 
gether  to  tolerate — and  such  a  passion  for  being  ill 
that  she  could  never  quite  believe  in  the  illnesses  of 
others. 

"  I  can  wait  just  that  long,  Miss  Morton,"  she 
said;  "but  I'm  sufferin'  so  from  rheumatism  in  my 
fingers  that  I  just  know  my  old  gastric  trouble  is 
comin'  on  ag'in,  an'  that'll  mean  another  of  them 
hospital-bills." 

Mary  raised  her  aching  head. 

'  You  won't  have  to  wait  any  longer,"  she  an 
swered. 

"  I'm  glad  of  it,  Miss  Morton,"  responded  Mrs. 
Foote,  "  for  there  was  a  young  lady  lookin'  at  this 
room  to-day  an'  she  offered  me  a  dollar  more  a 
week  for  it,  an'  I  wouldn't  like  to  lose  you." 

'  You  won't  lose  me,"  said  Mary,  to  whom  even 
sustained  conversation  was  physical  pain.  "  I'm 
goin'  out  to-night,  an'  I'll  have  plenty  for  you  by 
the  mornin'." 

'You're  sure?"  asked  the  landlady. 

"  Of  course  I  am.  It'd  be  a  pity  if  I  couldn't  earn 
that  much." 

Mrs.  Foote  looked  at  Mary's  face  and  seemed  to 
doubt  the  foundation  for  her  assurance. 

"  Well,"  she  sighed,  "  I  certainly  hope  you  can." 


4i 8         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

For  some  minutes  after  the  door  closed,  Mary  lay 
still.  She  had  again  been  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  most  poignant  of  tragedies,  the  tragedy  of  living. 

An  hour  earlier,  had  she  questioned  herself,  she 
would  have  said  that  she  was  careless  of  life,  that 
neither  this  earth  nor  the  quitting  of  it  interested  her, 
that  continued  existence  was  a  matter  of  indifference. 
Then  she  was  in  that  state  of  exultation  above  things 
mundane  which  is  produced  only  by  great  sorrow, 
great  joy,  or  the  great  revenges  that  are  both  grief 
and  triumph.  But  now  the  words  of  the  landlady 
had  brought  her  back  from  the  indulgence  of  con 
templation  to  the  necessity  of  action.  Mary's  insidi 
ous,  implacable  disease  had  completed  what  her  busi 
ness  had  begun,  and  what  her  business  alone  would 
have  completed  far  more  slowly.  The  few  emotions 
that  she  was  now  capable  of  feeling  were  the  more 
intense  because  of  their  rarity,  but  their  intensity  was 
equaled  by  their  brevity  and,  when  the  moment  had 
gone,  it  left  her  even  more  of  a  moral  weakling  than 
it  had  found  her. 

She  knew  Mrs.  Foote  and  her  tribe  too  well  to 
deceive  herself  as  to  what  must  happen  should  the 
morning  dawn  upon  an  empty  stocking.  Life  held 
nothing  for  which  Mary  greatly  cared,  but  the  in 
stant  of  death  contained  all  of  which  she  was  afraid. 
She  did  not  greatly  want  to  harm  others  by  plying 
her  trade  in  her  present  condition,  but  she  could  not 
think  of  others.  Each  step  would  be  a  separate 
wound  to  her  tortured  body  and  her  throbbing  head, 
but  she  understood  that  the  landlady  had  to  wring 
out  the  rents  by  the  means  that  conditions  had  forced 
upon  her;  and  so  the  worst  of  fears,  the  fear  of 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         419 

poverty,  which  is  the  fear  of  death,  took  this  sick 
woman  from  her  bed,  dressed  her  in  her  best  frock, 
and  sent  her  out  into  the  street. 

Along  Sixth  Avenue,  where  fortune  had  often, 
theretofore,  been  kind  to  her,  she  met  no  significant 
glances.  A  passing  girl  or  two,  having  missed  her 
for  the  last  few  evenings,  proffered  a  casual  sym 
pathy;  but  that  was  all.  Through  the  open  doors 
of  the  Haymarket,  she  turned  in,  but  there  even  the 
women  at  first  disregarded  her.  Several  men  that 
she  recognized  in  the  boxes  of  the  gallery  around 
the  little  hall  nodded,  but  immediately  looked  away. 
The  one  man  that  she  happened  to  know  better  than 
any  of  the  others  did  not  appear  at  all  to  remember 
her,  and  his  neighbor,  who  had  frequently  accom 
panied  her,  signaled  elsewhere. 

She  was  lonely.  She  approached  two  women  who 
were  circling  the  floor,  arm  in  arm.  She  addressed 
them  with  the  familiarity  of  the  craft. 

"  Hello,"  she  said. 

The  one  woman  smiled,  but  her  companion,  a 
formidable,  tailor-made  personage,  swelled  with  dig 
nity. 

"  You  better  beat  it,"  she  declared. 

Mary  flushed. 

"What's  eatin'  you?"  she  demanded. 
'  You  don't  belong  here,"  the  woman  answered. 
She  made  a  lofty  survey  of  Mary's  finery,  and  then 
added:  "Coin'?" 

Mary's  heart  sickened,  but  she  stood  her  ground. 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  I  ain't." 

The  floor-manager  was  passing.  The  social  ar 
biter  turned  to  him. 


420         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Will,"  she  asked,  and  her  shrill  voice  seemed  to 
carry  over  all  the  room;  "what's  this  place  comin' 
to?  Throw  that  Fourteenth  Street  woman  out  o' 
here!" 

This  was  enough.  Mary  left  the  place,  and,  still 
aching  in  every  limb,  turned  through  a  narrow  cross- 
street  to  Broadway.  Her  eyes  swam  as  she  lingered 
before  shop-windows  in  the  hope  that  someone  she 
passed  would  accost  her.  Her  throat  was  dry  and 
it  hurt  her  when  she  hummed  into  the  ears  of  care 
less  pedestrians.  Nobody  seemed  to  heed  her.  The 
night  was  cold,  and  she  shook  like  a  recovering 
drunkard.  She  mastered  all  her  strength  to  speak 
plainly  to  a  complacent  man  in  a  great  ulster. 

"  Hello !  "  she  said,  trying  to  smile.  "  What's 
your  hurry?  " 

The  man  looked  at  her  and  swore. 

"  You  must  think  I'm  blind,"  he  ended. 

She  knew  that  she  looked  ill,  but  she  knew  that 
she  must  find  money.  She  pleaded  with  age,  because 
she  knew  it  to  be  aesthetically  tolerant;  she  ogled 
youth,  because  she  knew  it  to  be  inexperienced;  and 
she  stationed  herself  at  last  near  a  saloon  in  a  poorly 
lighted  quarter,  because  she  concluded  that  the  men 
leaving  such  places  were  the  only  men  to  whom  she 
was  just  then  fitted  successfully  to  appeal.  It  was 
one  o'clock  in  the  morning  before  she  could  induce 
even  one  of  these  to  give  way  to  her,  and  he,  stag 
gering  with  drink  so  that  she  had  to  support  him 
with  all  her  ebbing  powers,  insisted  on  stopping  in 
an  alleyway  when,  for  the  first  time,  she  picked  a 
pocket.  A  dollar  and  a  half  was  all  that  she  had 
as  she  left  him,  and  the  next  dark  figure  that  she 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         421 

stopped — she  did  not  look  at  his  face  or  care  what 
sort  of  face  it  was — answered  her  with  sharp  laugh 
ter. 

"A  two-spot?"  he  cackled.  "You  have  a  few 
more  thinks  comin',  old  girl !  " 

"A  dollar?"  suggested  Mary,  tremulously. 

"  I  got  just  a  half — an'  you  ain't  worth  a  cent 


more." 


She  took  it — what  would  she  not  have  taken? — 
and  she  worked  on  into  the  dawn,  on  with  a  mount 
ing  fever  and  a  sick  determination,  knowing  now 
that  her  chances  grew  with  the  approach  of  morning 
and  finding  herself,  when  at  last  the  morning  came, 
with  scarcely  a  dollar  beyond  the  sum  due  for  rent. 

During  all  the  months  that  followed  she  skirted 
the  dire  edge  of  starvation,  more  than  half  the  time 
too  ill  to  rise  from  her  bed  and  aware  that  she  was 
at  no  moment  fit  to  rise.  As  her  cold  grew  steadily 
better  her  deeper  illness  steadily  increased.  It 
thrived  on  every  exertion  and  seemed  to  gain  each 
atom  of  strength  that  she  lost.  Things  might  thus 
continue  for  almost  any  period,  but  she  knew  that 
her  manner  of  life  forbade  absolute  cure,  and  that, 
at  the  end,  there  waited  a  slow  and  loathsome  death. 
Anticipation  made  her  faint;  the  melancholia  and 
terror,  which  are  symptomatic,  sometimes  nearly 
maddened  her.  The  last  vestiges  of  the  moral  sense, 
so  early  injured  by  previous  experience,  were  almost 
wholly  destroyed;  there  was  no  social  consciousness; 
the  appeal  of  the  individual  widened  until  it  occu 
pied  her  entire  horizon;  there  was  room  for  nothing 
but  the  craven  passion  for  life. 

Fat  Dr.  Helwig,  when  she  went  to  see  him,  blinked 


422         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

at  her  out  of  his  deep-set  eyes,  and  told  her  that  she 
was  not  taking  sufficient  rest. 

Mary  twisted  her  helpless  hands. 

"  How  can  I  afford  to  take  it?  "  she  asked. 

"  Save  your  money,"  said  he,  patting  her  thin 
shoulders,  and  chuckling  prosperously.  "  You  girls 
never  put  aside  a  cent." 

"  We  don't  earn  enough." 

"Poof!  That's  what  you  all  say.  I  know — I 
know.  We  men  aren't  such  fools  as  you  take  us 
for."  . 

But  Mary,  as  each  evening  she  made  up  before 
her  little  mirror,  noted  the  gradual  depreciation  of 
her  wares;  each  week  she  found  it  harder  to  pay 
rent  and  retain  enough  money  for  food.  Mrs.  Foote 
seemed  to  come  every  day,  instead  of  every  seventh, 
and  yet  each  night  business  grew  more  difficult. 
Whenever  Mary  missed  a  few  evenings,  or  whenever 
she  changed  her  hunting-grounds,  the  police  needed 
fresh  payments.  She  surrendered  one  uptown  cross- 
street  after  another.  At  last  she  deserted  Broadway 
and  patrolled  only  that  Fourteenth  Street  which  the 
woman  at  the  Haymarket  had  so  scornfully  referred 
to  and  which  had  so  wonderfully  burst  upon  Mary's 
sight  when  she  first  stepped  from  the  Hudson  Tunnel 
upon  the  surface  of  Manhattan. 

Spring,  summer,  and  autumn  passed,  and  a  lean 
winter  followed  them.  Mary  caught  another  cold 
and  was  ill  for  a  week.  She  went  to  work  too  soon 
and  had  to  go  back  to  bed  for  several  days  and 
remain  idle  for  several  nights.  At  last,  with  the 
ancient  fear  of  the  white  race — the  fear  of  that 
poverty  which  is  death — gnawing  at  her  vitals,  she 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         423 

struggled  to  her  feet  and  tramped  once  more  along 
Fourteenth  Street  from  Sixth  Avenue  to  Third. 

But  now  the  sword  descended.  Even  the  Four 
teenth  Street  saloon  best  known  for  her  purposes 
gave  no  fish  to  her  net,  and  Eighth  Street  was  little 
better.  She  was  too  tired  to  go  farther;  she  had, 
the  next  morning,  to  offer  Mrs.  Foote  only  a  third 
of  what  was  due. 

The  landlady,  whose  bulk  seemed  to  crowd  the 
hall-bedroom,  leaned  heavily  against  its  frail  door. 
Mary  thought  the  woman's  slow,  brown  eyes  more 
than  commonly  suspicious  and  her  round  face  im 
placably  hard.  The  tenant,  with  all  explanation 
frozen  upon  her  lips,  handed  over  the  clinking  bits 
of  money.  They  fell  into  the  big,  extended  palm  as 
a  few  drops  of  water  might  fall  into  a  basin.  Mrs. 
Foote  began  slowly  to  count  the  coins. 

Mary  watched,  in  fascinated  silence,  the  counting 
of  .those  few  pieces  of  silver,  each  one  of  which 
seemed  stained  with  her  blood.  She  saw  the  land 
lady's  expression  change  to  one  of  incredulity.  She 
saw  the  counting  repeated. 

Mrs.  Foote  again  thrust  out  her  grimy  fingers. 

"What's  this?"  she  demanded. 

"  It's "     Mary  looked  at  the  floor.     "  It's  the 

rent,"  she  concluded,  in  a  whisper. 

"What's  the  rent?" 

'  That's  all  I  have — just  now.  I  thought — I 
thought,  considerin'  how  long  I've  been  here,  you 
might  wait  a  day  for  the  rest,  Mrs.  Foote." 

The  landlady  opened  her  hand,  and  Mary's  little 
store  of  coin  dropped  to  the  bed. 

"  I  can't  take  this,"  she  said. 


424         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  You  mean,"  asked  Mary,  with  a  quick  gasp  of 
hope,  "  that  you'll  let  me  keep  it  till  I  get  the  rest?  " 

"  No,  I  don't  mean  nothin'  of  the  sort,"  said  Mrs. 
Foote.  "  I  mean  I've  got  to  have  the  whole  bill — • 
right  now." 

Mary's  heart  sank. 

"  That's  all  I  have,"  she  said. 

She  had  sunk  to  a  seat  on  the  tumbled  bed,  beside 
her  scattered  coins.  Her  thin  hands  were  locked 
across  her  knees ;  the  dirty  pink  kimona  slipped  lower 
from  her  shoulders  at  every  frequent  cough,  and 
her  eyes  sought  those  of  Mrs.  Foote  in  dumb  appeal. 
Her  russet  hair  fell  dully  disordered  about  her  hol 
low  cheeks,  and  the  rouge  on  her  lips  was  purple. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  pursued  Mrs.  Foote,  who  was  too 
used  to  such  incidents  greatly  to  concern  herself; 
"  but  I've  got  to  make  my  living  like  anybody  else 
does." 

"  I  was  expectin'  some  money  this  evenin',"  said 
Mary. 

"  Hump !  "  sniffed  the  landlady. 

"  You  don't  believe  that?  " 

"I  don't  care,  Miss  Morton;  I  can't  care." 

"  But  I  " — Mary's  fingers  knotted  tighter  about 
her  knees — "  I  was  promised  it,"  she  lied,  "  an'  I'm 
dead  sure  to  get  it  then." 

"  I've  heard  that  so  many  times,"  said  Mrs.  Foote, 
"  that  I  knowed  it  by  heart  three  year'  ago." 

"  I  could  pawn  somethin',"  suggested  Mary. 

The  landlady  swept  the  bare  room  with  a  critical 
glance. 
'  "What?"  she  asked. 

"  There   was   no   adequate   answer  to   be   made. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         425 

Mary  had  tried  to  pledge  her  coat  a  few  days  before, 
and  had  been  offered  only  an  inadequate  twenty-five 
cents  for  it. 

"  Then  you  won't — you  can't  wait?  " 

"No,  I  can't.  I'm  a  sick  woman  myself;  my 
rent's  due,  Miss  Mary,  an'  the  honest  truth  is  that 
there's  such  a  lot  of  women  wantin'  rooms  that  I'd 
only  be  doin'  a  injustice  to  my  children  not  to  take 
in  a  lady  that  could  pay  prompt — for  a  while." 

Mary  said  nothing  more.  She  packed  her  few 
belongings  into  her  trunk,  left  it  in  the  hall  to  be 
called  for,  and,  as  the  chill  evening  fell,  went  away 
from  the  house  with  no  idea  where  she  was  to  find 
a  lodging  for  the  night.  For  an  hour,  though  she 
was  still  weak,  and  the  time  was  as  yet  so  early,  she 
walked  up  Broadway  and,  in  the  Forties,  turned  east 
ward  for  a  few  blocks,  and  so  south  again.  Not 
far  from  the  Grand  Central  Station  she  saw  a  little 
crowd  gathered  at  a  corner,  and  she  stopped,  rather 
for  the  luxury  of  standing  still  than  from  any  curi 
osity. 

The  place  was  a  church.  Colored  lights  streamed 
from  its  rich  stained-glass  windows.  Through  its 
swinging  doors  there  stole  the  scent  of  flowers  and 
the  sound  of  delicate  music.  A  long  row  of  car 
riages,  the  coachmen  walking  up  and  down  to  keep 
warm,  stretched  far  around  the  corner. 

Mary,  shivering,  worked  her  way  quietly  through 
the  group  of  men  and  women  on  the  sidewalk.  In 
order  to  avoid  a  particularly  entangled  portion  of 
the  press,  she  started  to  walk  along  the  steps  by  the 
tower-entrance,  and  then,  seeing  a  side-door  open, 
she  listlessly  turned  toward  it  and  looked  in. 


426         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Far  away  up  the  vaulted  nave  the  altar  stood, 
white  with  damask  and  yellow  with  candles.  The 
chancel  was  a  garden,  the  whole  building  heavy  with 
scent.  Acolytes  in  scarlet  were  grouped  about  the 
robed  priests.  The  choir  had  risen  and,  preceded 
by  a  lad  that  bore  aloft  a  great  brass  cross,  were 
forming  into  a  singing  procession,  which  slowly  filed 
down  the  center  aisle. 

With  a  subdued  scuffle  and  swish,  the  congrega 
tion  also  rose  as  the  double  line  of  choristers  moved 
between  them.  Women  craned  their  necks  and  men, 
pretending  to  look  stolidly  ahead  of  them,  looked 
really  out  of  the  corners  of  their  eyes.  The  choir, 
at  the  main  door,  divided  and  stood  still.  High 
overhead  a  deep-toned  organ  was  playing  the  wed 
ding-march  from  Lohengrin,  and  through  the  re 
spectful  line  of  white-clad  boys  there  moved  a  man 
of  regular  features  with  lowered  lids  that  hid  his 
eyes,  and  a  crisp  brown  mustache,  which  concealed 
his  lips,  and,  on  his  arm,  in  the  costume  of  a  bride, 
a  tall,  graceful,  pure  woman,  whose  face  was  like 
a  Greek  cameo  and  in  whose  hand  was  a  huge  bunch 
of  orchids  and  lilies-of-the-valley. 

The  fingers  of  a  policeman  touched  Mary's  arm. 

"You'll  have  to  get  back,"  he  said.  "The 
people'll  be  comin'  out  in  a  minute." 

But  Mary  did  not  wish  to  move. 

"  I've  got  a  right  here,"  she  answered. 

'  You  ?  "  The  policeman  looked  at  her,  and  then 
laughed.  "What  right?"  he  asked. 

"  Isn't  that  Miss  Lennox?  " 

"  It  was." 

"And  Judge  Dyker?" 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         427 

"  Sure." 

"  Well,  I  gave  him  his  marriage-license." 

The  policeman's  good-nature  was  amused,  but  he 
forced  her  back  to  the  street. 

"  No  use,"  he  said. 

"  An'  I  guess,"  said  Mary  bitterly — "  I  guess  I 
paid  for  the  bride's  bouquet." 

He  did  not  reply,  nor  would  she  have  heard  him 
had  he  spoken,  for  in  the  stream  of  lesser  guests  now 
flowing  from  the  rear  of  the  church,  which  had  been 
assigned  to  them,  she  was  met  by  Katie  Flanagan. 

Not  the  piquant  Katie  of  that  photograph  which 
used  to  adorn  the  bureau  in  the  shabby  tenement  of 
bachelor  Hermann  Hoffmann,  or  the  saucy  girl  of 
the  second-hand  clothing-store,  or  yet  the  frightened 
clerk  that  had  at  first  evaded  and  at  last  defied  the 
whiskered  Mr.  Porter.  Those  days  were  patently 
passed;  Katie,  like  many  another  strong  soul,  had 
faced  temptation  and  conquered  it;  and  in  the  stead 
of  the  old  days  had  come  new  days  that  brought  a 
maturity  and  a  dignity  with  which  Katie  was  con 
sciously  satisfied.  Her  blue  eyes  were  as  glad  as 
Mary  remembered  them,  but  their  happiness  was 
calm;  her  black  hair  was  gathered  in  a  formal  knot, 
and  her  gown,  though  a  better  gown  than  that  she 
used  to  wear,  was  of  a  simplicity  almost  severe. 

Nevertheless,  when  she  saw  Mary,  who  sought 
evasion,  Katie  came  frankly  forward  with  out 
stretched  hand.  She  recognized  with  regret,  the 
change  in  her  former  acquaintance,  but,  knowing,  as 
she  must  have  known,  its  cause,  she  decided  to  ask 
no  questions  concerning  it,  and,  if  she  offered  no 
assistance,  she  at  least  proffered  no  advice. 


428         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I  just  come  to  see  the  last  o'  Miss  Marian,"  she 
explained.  "  Near  the  half  of  old  Rivington  Street's 
been  tucked  in  here  among  th'  swells  to  give  the 
good  word  to  her — Jews  an'  Irish — an'  if  the  rabbis 
won't  mind  for  the  sheenies  to  come  to  such  a  heathen 
church,  I  thought  Father  Kelly  might  manage  to 
forgive  me." 

Mary's  brain  was  just  then  too  dull  to  make  any 
but  a  commonplace  answer. 

"  You're  lookin'  well,"  she  said. 

"  I  ought  to  be,  though  there's  a  youngster  ex 
pected.  I  tell  Hermann — we  was  married  a  few 
weeks  after  last  election — I  don't  know  how  we'll 
keep  a  family;  but  he  just  whistles  an'  says  we'll 
make  out  some  way,  an'  I  guess  we  will." 

"  I'm  glad,"  said  Mary,  "  that  you're  married." 

"  Well,  so  am  I — most  of  the  time.  Of  course, 
the  man  has  some  queer  ideas,  but  I'm  doin'  me 
best,  with  Father  Kelly's  help,  to  get  'em  out  of 
the  head  of  him,  an'  nowadays,  when  he  goes  to 
one  of  them  Socialist  meetin's  by  night,  I  make  him 
make  up  by  goin'  with  me  to  early  mass  next  morn- 
in'." 

She  paused  and  surveyed  again  the  pale  woman 
before  her.  Essentially  Katie  had  not  changed.  She 
had  still,  and  would  always  have,  the  big,  kind  heart 
and  the  ready  hand  of  her  earlier  days.  But  her 
condition  had  altered,  and  Mary's  had  evidently 
again  fallen;  she  looked  through  an  alien  atmos 
phere,  and  her  gaze  was  distant:  the  responsibilities 
and  adjustment  of  young  married  life  shackled  her, 
and  must  continue  to  shackle  her  until  they  were  no 
longer  new.  She  did  not  know  how  to  suggest  any 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         429 

assistance,  did  not  even  believe  that  it  was  desired; 
but,  though  she  still  felt  that  she  must  refrain  from 
intimate  inquiry,  one  effort  she  tried  to  make. 

"  An'  you,"  she  asked — "  how're  you  gettin'  on, 
Mary?" 

Mary  bit  her  lip. 

"  Fine,"  she  answered,  huskily. 

"  Are  you ?  There  ain't ?  "  Katie  floun 
dered  in  a  maze  that  she  would,  a  few  months  pre 
viously  or  a  few  months  in  the  future,  have  cut  her 
way  through  with  a  strong  directness.  "  There  ain't 
nothin'  I  could ?" 

Mary's  head  shook,  almost  mechanically.  It  was 
not  entirely  that  she  felt  unable  to  accept  assistance 
from  her  former  protector;  it  was  rather  that  she 
felt  only  that  she  must  run  away. 

"  Oh,  no,"  she  said,  forcing  a  smile.  "  I'm  doin' 
grand." 

The  gala  crowd  was  sweeping  about  them.  It 
jostled  both  girls  and  threatened  momentarily  to 
separate  them.  After  all,  there  was  nothing  more 
to  be  said. 

"  I — I  got  to  go,"  murmured  Mary.  "  I  got  an 
appointment " 

"  But  you'll  come  to  see  us  sometime,  won't  you 
Mary?  "  asked  Katie,  and  she  gave  her  address. 
"  We'll  have  a  fine  party  at  the  christenin',  an'  I'll 
want  you  to  see  the  baby." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Mary;  "  yes,  of  course." 

But  Katie  was  hesitant. 

"  You're  sure  I  can't  do  nothin'?  "  she  asked. 

"  No,  no.  I "  Mary  caught  and  pressed  with 

what  warmth  there  was  left  in  her  fingers,  the  Irish 


430        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

girl's  hand.  "  Good-by,"  she  concluded,  and  then, 
in  order  to  keep  up  the  farce  of  an  appointment,  she 
got  upon  a  passing  car. 

Even  if  panic  had  not  possessed  her,  she  could 
not  have  accepted  anything  that  Katie  might  offer. 
The  most  that  could  have  been  given  her  would  have 
been  but  temporary,  and  what  she  must  have  was  a 
means  of  earning  a  living. 

She  rode  well  downtown,  and  then  walked  farther 
southward.  She  slipped  along  the  broad,  yellow- 
lighted  Bowery,  gathering  one  or  two  quarters  on 
her  way,  and  wandered  into  the  narrow,  serpentine, 
fevered  alleys  of  Chinatown.  When  an  ugly  rain 
began  to  fall,  the  open  door  of  a  mission  attracted 
her,  and  she  went  in  to  rest. 

It  was  the  typical  mission-room,  very  different 
from  the  uptown  church  where  she  had  seen  the  wed 
ding.  This  new  place  was  mean;  it  had  a  low  ceil 
ing  and  was  none  too  clean.  The  lights  were  flaring 
and  the  dull  walls  were  enlivened  by  boldly  lettered 
Bible  texts.  The  air  was  close;  on  the  platform,  at 
the  front  of  the  place,  a  well-fed  man  was  pleading, 
in  sweat  and  tears,  the  cause  of  his  religion;  nearby, 
his  double  was  making  ready  the  reed-organ. 
Crowded  into  the  unsteady  benches  were  pimpled 
boys  with  lolling  mouths  and  preternaturally  know 
ing  eyes;  youths  already  old  in  disease  and  drink  and 
crime;  full-grown  men,  frog-eyed  or  blear-eyed,  who 
needed  only  the  faculty  of  firmness  and  the  chance 
to  cultivate  it;  old  men,  who  had  lost  their  hold  upon 
work  in  a  country  still  too  barbarous  to  pension  its 
aged;  and,  though  there  were  no  young  girls,  here 
and  there  Mary  saw  a  few  women,  bedraggled,  sod- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         431 

den,  hideous,  because  men  had  at  some  time  thought 
them  chic,  dainty,  beautiful. 

One  of  the  "  workers  "  attached  to  the  place — a 
bland,  prosperous  man,  with  a  pleasant  smile — ap 
proached  Mary  and  shook  her  hand  as  if  he  were 
an  old  acquaintance.  He  had  fat  red  cheeks,  firm 
teeth,  and  kindly  eyes. 

"  I'm  glad  to  see  you,  sister,"  he  said.  "  Are  you 
saved?  " 

Mary's  childhood  had  heard  some  of  the  phrase 
ology  of  evangelicalism.  She  understood,  but  she 
had  come  to  receive  worldly,  not  spiritual,  warmth. 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  I  ain't." 

The  "  worker,"  however,  was  accustomed  to  that 
reply.  He  patted  her  shoulder. 

"Don't  you  believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ?" 
he  asked. 

"  Well,"  said  Mary,  "  I  never  thought  much 
about  Him." 

She  looked  at  the  floor.  She  was  cold  and  hungry 
and  afraid. 

"  Then,"  responded  the  man,  with  genuine  earnest 
ness,  "  you  ought  to  begin  to  think.  No  man  know- 
eth  the  hour  of  His  comin'.  He  is  ready  with  the 
Free  Gift.  Don't  you  want  to  come  to  Him?  " 

Mary's  life  had  been  one  in  which  there  had  been 
small  time  for  the  cultivation  of  religious  emotion, 
and  no  time  at  all  for  the  cultivation  of  religious 
thought.  At  her  home  she  had  learned  as  much  by 
rote  as  she  had  had  to  learn,  but  what  she  got  she 
held  only  as  so  many  tasks  performed.  The  words 
were  lessons  to  be  mastered;  if  they  had  any  relation 
to  facts,  those  facts  were  things  not  to  be  faced  until 


432         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

an  age  of  discretion,  and,  pending  the  arrival  of  that 
age,  the  lessons  had  been  stored  away  with  a  bland, 
childish  practicality.  What  followed  later  had 
driven  out  all  that  preceded  it.  The  shock  of  her 
capture;  the  wild,  new  order  of  existence;  the  en 
deavor  to  escape;  the  battle  of  service  among  new 
conditions;  and,  at  last,  the  dulling  of  all  the  finer 
sensibilities  and  the  final  fight  for  a  mere  chance  to 
continue  alive — these  were  circumstances  neither  pro 
pitious  to  theology  nor  favorable  to  faith. 

She  glanced  at  the  mission-worker,  and  then 
glanced  away. 

"  I  dunno,"  she  said.  "  I  guess  I  ain't  the  kind 
of  woman  religion  can  do  much  for." 

"  Don't  say  that,"  protested  the  man.  His  eyes 
shone  with  zeal  and  his  voice  was  tender.  "  His 
grace  is  free  for  all  who  come.  His  mercy  is  from 
everlastin'  to  everlastin'.  I've  been  a  sinner  myself  " 
— the  speaker's  voice  swelled  with  a  real  pride — "  a 
terrible  sinner,  an'  I  know  what  I  say,  praise  the 
Lord.  The  meaner  an'  viler  we  are,  the  more  Jesus 
needs  us.  Just  open  your  heart.  Just  accept  Him, 
an'  you'll  never  know  no  more  trouble  in  this  world 
nor  the  next." 

"Would  I  get  a  job?"  asked  Mary. 

The  man  shook  his  head,  sadly. 

"  That  ain't  no  way  to  think  about  salvation," 
he  declared.  "  What's  freely  given  ought  to  be 
freely  received.  Now  is  the  appointed  time." 

"  But  I  gotta  make  a  livin'." 

"  I  know  it,  I  know  it.  We've  all  got  to  do  that, 
but  ain't  it  better  to  make  one  an'  be  saved  than  to 
make  one  an'  be  sent  to  hell-fire  ?  " 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         433 

She  assented.  "  Only,"  she  added,  "  I  don't  want 
to  starve,  even  if  I  am  saved." 

It  was  his  old  difficulty. 

"I  know,"  he  repeated;  "an'  we'd  only  be  too 
glad  to  get  you  work  if  we  could,  but  times  are  hard 
an'  we've  got  a  waitin'-list  of  fifty  at  this  very  minute. 
Here's  some  meal-tickets,  sister,  fer  we  want  to  do 
what  we  can,  an'  we  know  it's  hard  to  save  souls  on 
empty  stomachs.  You  just  think  it  over  an'  see  if 
I'm  not  right  about  religion." 

She  took  the  tickets  and  used  them  at  a  five-cent 
eating-house  during  the  next  day.  That  night  she 
managed  to  secure  a  bed  in  a  room  over  a  saloon — 
a  narrow,  stuffy  room  that  she  shared  with  three  other 
women  of  her  own  sort ;  but  the  next  night  she  earned 
nothing,  and  she  had  been  compelled  to  pawn  her 
coat  for  food.  She  sought  a  bench  in  Union  Square, 
where  two  tattered  men  made  room  for  her.  They 
gave  her,  to  wrap  about  her  chest,  newspapers  that 
they  had  gathered  from  the  gutter;  and  she  dozed 
until  the  sharp  command  of  a  policeman  scattered 
her  comrades,  when  they  made  their  way  to  the  rear 
of  the  Flatiron  Building  and  stood,  for  warmth,  over 
a  grill  that  sent  up  occasional  blasts  of  heat  from 
the  basement. 

The  rapidity  with  which  one  may  descend  from 
bad  to  worse  is  to  be  believed  only  by  those  who 
have  been  penniless  and  friendless  in  the  larger  cities. 
During  the  nights  that  followed,  when  Mary's 
clothes  grew  speedily  ragged,  dirty,  and  odorous, 
and  when  she  earned  just  enough  money  to  postpone 
starvation,  she  became  a  familiar  of  Chinatown, 
learned  something  of  its  blind  paths  and  the  tangled 


434         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

passages  of  its  fetid  tenements.  The  almond-eyed 
Orientals  tolerantly  received  her.  She  came  to  know 
the  heavy  odors  of  the  opium,  to  chat  with  clay- 
white  American  girls,  morphine-eaters,  and  cocaine 
and  chloral  victims,  whose  Chinese  lovers  were  kind 
to  them,  and  who  never  wanted  to  breathe  the  open 
air.  She  was  borne  with,  but  the  market  was  over- 
supplied  there,  and  she  found  no  regular  keeper. 
She  came  to  envy  the  drug-enslaved  women  who  had 
firsf  sought  the  Mott  Street  district  as  missionaries, 
even  the  little  Mongolian  girls  over  whose  slavery, 
so  much  lighter  than  her  own,  the  city,  from  time  to 
time,  grew  ludicrously  excited.  Her  illness  pro 
gressed,  but,  thanks  to  her  hardy  birth  and  the  exer 
cise  of  what  care  was  at  all  possible,  it  progressed 
with  a  step  so  tardy  as  to  give  no  indication  of  reach 
ing  its  tragic  end,  other  things  being  equal,  for  two 
years  or  more.  She  did  not  again  go  to  see  the 
doctor;  she  did  not  have  to.  The  only  things  that 
he  could  have  advised  were  the  things  that  she  was 
in  no  position  to  do.  Beyond  a  certain  limited 
amount  of  routine  care,  she  was  helpless. 

One  night,  wet  and  exhausted,  she  met  a  sailor  in 
Chatham  Square,  and  drank  long  with  him. 

"Where  you  goin'  to  sleep  to-night?"  he  asked, 
as  they  were  about  to  part. 

He  was  a  short,  black-browed  man,  who  walked 
with  a  bow-legged  roll.  The  short  sleeves  of  his 
jacket  displayed  sinewy,  bronze  wrists  with  anchors 
tattooed  upon  them.  His  neck  rose  out  of  his  low- 
cut  mariner's  shirt  like  the  neck  of  a  brown,  fighting 
bull,  and  his  black  eyes,  set  deep  under  bushy,  frown 
ing  brows,  were  red,  like  those  of  a  bull  that  is  dan- 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         435 

gerous.  He  had  been  taken  with  a  drunken  passion 
for  her,  and  though,  when  he  kissed  her,  his  upper 
lip  scraped  her  face  like  a  file,  though  his  incessant 
grip  of  her  hands  hurt  her,  and  though  his  heavy 
foot,  seeking  hers  beneath  the  saloon-table,  nearly 
crushed  her  own,  she  had  to  answer  him  with  the 
professional  smile. 

"  I  dunno  where  I'll  sleep,"  she  said.  "  I  guess 
Lee  Hung's  Letty'll  put  me  up." 

The  sailor  chucked  her  pointed  chin  so  roughly 
that  she  thought  her  neck  would  crack. 

"  Why  don't  you  come  along  o'  me?  "  he  inquired. 

"Where's  that?" 

"  To  one  o'  our  places.  I  know  a  beauty,  an'  I'll 
take  good  care  o'  you,  an'  afterward  you  can  stay 
on." 

"  One  of  your  places?    What's  those?  " 

"  Places  we  visit.  Places  for  seafarin'  men.  I 
tells  you  I  knows  a  daisy — Big  Lou's  keepin'  it — an' 
they  needs  a  new  gal  there,  for  I  stopped  in  as  I 
come  ashore  this  evenin'  an'  they  tole  me  the  one 
I  knew  after  last  voyage  was  buried  only  yesterday." 

Mary  shuddered. 

"  Is  it  all  right?  "  she  asked. 

"All  right?  Course  it's  all  right.  But  mind 
you," — his  black  eyes  leaped  into  a  sudden  threat — 
"  I'm  takin'  you  to-night.  No  philanderin'.  For 
this  night  y'er  my  gal." 

She  looked  away. 

"  Mind  you  that,"  he  drunkenly  repeated.  "  I'm 
mostly  as  gentle  as  Nathan's  lamb,  but  when  I'm 
tricked  I'm  ready  with  my  hands.  It's  all  right. 
It's  a  good  place  for  a  good  time.  Plenty  to  drink 


436         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

an'  the  best  o'  company.     Better  come.     I  can  fix  It 
so's  you  can  get  a  steady  job  there." 

She  shivered  again,  but  she  could  not  see  why  she 
should  shiver.  After  all,  she  was  glad  to  learn  of 
any  place  where  she  would  be  sure  of  food  to  eat 
and  a  roof  to  cover  her — and  so  she  came  to  Sum- 
merton's. 


XXIX 

THE  DOORS  OF  THE  SHADOW 

IT  is  a  winding  and  tortuous  way  across  Green 
wich  Village  to  Summerton's.  The  mazed  course 
runs  through  streets  that  squirm  like  worms  be 
tween  a  fisherman's  fingers;  it  skirts  cobbled  courts 
that  are  in  twilight  at  midday  and  damp  in  the  long 
est  drought;  it  turns  and  doubles  up  passages  that 
seem  blind,  dodges  through  the  very  bones  of  tumble 
down  warehouses,  storehouses,  houses  so  ramshackle 
that  the  imagination  can  conjure  no  possible  use  for 
them,  and  it  comes  out  at  last  into  a  foul  thorough 
fare  that  appears  to  be  no  better  than  a  stinking 
alley,  so  close  to  the  water's  edge  that  the  masts 
of  the  river's  cluttered  craft  look  as  if  they  grew 
upon  the  dirty,  sagging  roofs  opposite,  and  so  near 
to  the  wharves  that  the  green  walls  of  the  buildings 
are  wet  and  odorous  as  if  from  a  continuous  applica 
tion  of  bilge-water. 

By  day,  when  its  residents  are  asleep,  this  street 
is  loud  with  straining  Norman  horses,  and  clattering 
vans,  and  whip-cracking  carters  from  the  docks;  but 
by  night — and  the  nights  are  very  dark  down  there 
< — it  becomes  the  haunt  of  sailors  and  longshoremen, 
drunk  and  shouting,  or  still  and  drugged.  Then 
the  blue  electric  lamps  snap  hysterically  at  distant 
corners;  the  uneven  pavement  mounts  steeply  up 
ward,  or  dashes  precipitately  downward,  with  no 

437 


438         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

warning;  laughter  and  curses  and  the  crash  of  break 
ing  glass  or  spluttering  oaths  issue  now  and  again 
from  the  blackness  at  one's  elbow,  where,  hidden 
among  the  warehouses,  stand  the  houses  for  the  stor 
ing  of  another  sort  of  wares :  the  slave-houses  main 
tained  for  mariners.  Grotesque  men,  could  you  see 
them,  stagger  into  dim  entrances;  terrible  caricatures 
of  women,  if  the  light  would  show  them,  steal  out 
and  dart  upon  gutter-couched  drunkards  to  paw  their 
pockets.  The  night  is  alive  with  shadows,  and  the 
whole  street  a  hungry,  quivering  quicksand. 

Only  by  urging  her  eyes  to  their  utmost  could 
Mary  make  out  anything  of  the  house  before  which 
she  and  her  unsteady  companion  came  to  pause. 
Even  then  all  of  which  she  could  be  sure  was  that, 
cowering  under  the  shadow  of  some  huge  brick 
building,  and  skulking  beneath  its  own  rotting  eaves, 
it  was  a  half-sunken,  old,  narrow  house,  long  since 
abandoned  as  unfit  for  legitimate  purposes,  and 
leaning  rakishly  to  one  side,  like  an  ancient  libertine 
that  knows  his  evil  and  grins  at  it. 

The  sailor  knocked  lightly  at  an  almost  unseen 
door.  A  panel  of  it  slid  open  and  threw  a  ray  of 
light  on  his  face. 

"Who's  there?"  asked  a  voice  that  was  like  the 
rasping  of  a  file. 

"  It's  Billy,"  said  the  sailor. 

"Billy  who?" 

"  Billy  Stevens.     Le'me  in,  Lou." 

A  pair  of  swollen  eyes  came  to  the  open  panel 
and  looked,  down  the  shaft  of  light,  into  the  sinister 
face  of  Bill. 

"  Who's  that  with  you?  "  croaked  the  voice. 


THE  HOUSE  uF  BONDAGE         439 

"  A  gal  I  got  for  you." 

"Is  she  all  right?" 

"  O'  course  she  is,  Lou ;  else  what  in  hell'd  she  be 
doin'  with  me?  Come  on;  le'me  in." 

The  swollen  eyes  disappeared,  and  the  panel  was 
shut.  There  was  a  sound  of  the  withdrawal  of  sev 
eral  bolts.  Then  the  door  swung  open,  was  closed 
and  relocked  behind  the  newcomers,  and  Mary  found 
herself  in  an  unfurnished  hall,  not  more  than  fifteen 
feet  square,  lighted  by  a  dim  lamp  standing  on  the 
lowest  step  of  a  steep  flight  of  stairs,  and  guarded 
by  the  owner  of  the  swollen  eyes. 

At  least  in  height,  "  Big  Lou  "  was  gigantic.  She 
was  fully  six  feet  tall;  she  stooped  a  little  and  was 
extremely  thin,  with  a  hollow  chest  and  narrow 
flanks,  partially  hidden  by  an  old  red  cotton  dressing- 
gown;  but  the  long  arms  were  like  flails,  and  Lou 
had  a  temper  that  did  not  hesitate  to  use  them  as 
such.  Her  dirty  brown  hair  was  already  touched 
with  gray;  she  had  almost  no  chin;  her  nose  was  a 
smudge  in  her  sodden  face  and  her  cheeks  were  heavy 
with  years  of  drunkenness.  Her  mouth  hung  loose 
and  quarrelsome,  and,  as  she  bent  over  to  look  hard 
at  Mary,  her  breath  was  foul. 

She  addressed  herself,  however,  entirely  to  the 
black-browed  Stevens. 

"  Where'd  you  git  her?"  she  asked,  as  if  Mary 
were  one  of  the  animals  not  gifted  with  articulate 
speech. 

Stevens  told  of  their  meeting. 

"Where's  she  from?" 

The  sailor  gave  a  rapid  and  wholly  fictitious  biog 
raphy. 


440         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"How  old?" 

"  Twenty,"  said  Bill. 

"  I  ain't !  "  protested  Mary. 

But  the  sailor  shot  her  an  ugly  look. 

"  Close  your  trap,"  he  told  her,  and  then,  to  Big 
Lou,  he  repeated:  "Twenty." 

Big  Lou  picked  up  the  lamp  and,  holding  it  in 
one  blackened  claw,  passed  the  other  over  Mary, 
with  dexterous  appraisement,  from  shoulders  to 
knees. 

"  I'll  give  you  a  five-spot  for  her,"  she  croaked. 

"  You'll  go  to  the  devil,"  retorted  Bill. 

"Six?" 

"  Ten." 

"  You're  a  damned  thief,  Stevens,  that's  what  you 
are,"  growled  the  old  woman.  "  I'll  give  you  seven, 
an'  not  another  God  damned  cent." 

Mary  leaned  against  the  moist  wall.  She  was  now 
past  caring,  and  she  hardly  heard. 

"  Make  it  seven-seventy-five,"  said  Bill,  with  sud 
den  ingratiation. 

Big  Lou  raised  the  lamp  again  and  again  regarded 
the  animal,  her  swollen  eyes  sharpening. 

"  I'll  tell  you  what  I'll  do,"  she  said,  once  more 
facing  the  sailor.  "  Are  you  goin'  to  stop  here  to 
night?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Well,  I'll  come  up  in  the  mornin'  and  take  a 
closer  look.  If  she  passes  that,  I'll  give  you  seven- 
fifty." 

Bill's  brown  face  worked  in  thought,  but  the 
thirst  for  liquor  was  upon  him,  and  he  com 
promised. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         441 

"  All  right,"  he  said — "  if  you'll  give  me  five 
down  on  account." 

The  giantess  flung  aside  her  red  dressing-gown 
and,  from  a  black  cotton  stocking  that  hung  loose 
upon  a  shriveled  shank,  drew  a  few  greasy  bills. 
From  these  she  reluctantly  counted  five,  handed  them 
to  Stevens,  and  returned  the  rest  to  their  original 
place  of  safety. 

"  G'on  up,"  she  said.  "  I  stay  here  till  work's 
done,  an'  take  tolls." 

From  somewhere  in  the  shadows  she  produced  a 
black  flask  and,  as  Mary,  with  the  sailor's  tattooed 
hand  tightly  under  her  arm,  began  the  steep  ascent, 
Big  Lou  settled  herself  at  her  post  of  gatekeeper 
upon  the  lowest  step. 

Those  stairs  seemed  almost  perpendicular.  They 
rose  out  of  the  darkness  of  the  hallway  at  an  alarm 
ing  angle;  each  step  was  close  upon  a  foot  high;  they 
were  not  a  yard  wide,  their  upper  half  was  boxed 
between  two  walls,  and  they  opened  directly  into  the 
room  that  evidently  served  as  the  parlor  of  Big  Lou 
Summerton's  establishment. 

The  room  was  small  and  badly  lighted  by  a  kero 
sene  hand-lamp,  which  stood  upon  a  circular  center- 
table  and  sent  up  a  thin  column  of  smoke  to  the 
sooty  ceiling.  A  spotted  lounge  with  dilapidated 
springs  stood  in  one  corner;  the  faded  paper  was 
peeling  from  the  plaster,  and  a  broken  stove,  which 
glowed  an  angry  red,  heated  the  place  to  a  degree 
that  was  well-nigh  unbearable.  The  air  was  stale 
and  rancid,  both  from  the  company  that  was  present 
and  from  a  long  entertainment  of  similar  companies, 
in  days  gone  by. 


442         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

There  were  only  two  persons  in  the  room.  Both 
were  seated  at  the  table,  both  were  drinking  whiskey 
poured  into  ragged-edged  glasses  from  a  bottle  that 
stood  between  them,  and  both  were,  or  had  been, 
women.  Of  these  one  coughed  so  sharply  and  con 
stantly  between  her  toothless  gums,  and  was  so 
shrunken  under  her-  blue  calico  mother-hubbard,  that 
it  was  plain  she  would  soon  be  nothing;  while  the 
other  was  a  creature  with  face  red  and  bloated,  fea 
tures  stunted  and  coarse,  eyes  that  glowed  dully,  and 
the  voice  of  a  crow. 

Stevens  presented  Mary  to  them,  and  wasted  no 
formalities. 

"  This  here's  a  new  one,"  he  said,  and,  motioning 
his  charge  to  a  third  chair,  himself  pulled  up  a 
fourth. 

The  two  inmates  received  her  with  a  loud  duet 
that  was  almost  a  choral  jeer.  Two  more  glasses 
were  produced  from  a  shadowy  cupboard,  and  the 
drinking  recommenced. 

Mary  took  one  long  drink  and,  wasted  by  priva 
tion,  passed  at  once  for  some  time  into  a  daze  in 
which,  though  she  saw  all,  she  reckoned  little.  She 
heard  Stevens  drop  into  the  babbling  stage  of  drunk 
enness;  she  noted  that,  though  the  women  kept  pace 
with  his  potations,  they  poured  water  into  their  own 
whiskey  and  gin  into  the  sailor's;  she  saw  him  loll 
in  his  chair  and  sway  over  the  table;  she  felt  his 
heavy  head  drop  at  last  on  her  thin  shoulder,  and 
she  did  not  move  while,  as  he  lay  there,  his  com 
panions — now  hers — went  through  his  clothes  and 
tiptoed  out  of  a  rear  door. 

It  was  then  that,  with  a  quick  start,  she  regained 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         443 

control  of  herself  at  the  sound  of  speech  below  and 
the  tread  of  feet  on  the  stairs.  A  rough  voice  had 
assured  Big  Lou  that  "  it  was  all  right,"  and  another 
voice  was  supplementing: 

"  Rest  easy,  my  dear  lady :  we  are  paying  as  we 
go.  Michael,  here,  is,  as  you  know,  a  deck-hand 
on  the  admirable  yacht  of  my  admirable  friend 
Marsden  Payne,  with  whom  I  have  been  on 
a  winter  excursion;  and  he  has  kindly  consented 
to  show  me  his  own  section  of  little  old  New 
York." 

Mary  knew  that  voice,  although  she  could  not 
at  once  identify  it;  but,  though  she  sprang  up  so 
quickly  that  she  wakened  the  tumbling  Stevens,  who 
slipped  to  the  floor,  she  could  not  escape  before  she 
found  herself  directly  regarding  the  flushed  face, 
glowing  gray  eyes,  and  disordered  hair  of  Philip 
Beekman. 

Still  young  and  slim  in  his  yachting  clothes,  he 
looked  at  her,  swaying  a  little  in  the  doorway,  his 
back  to  those  perilous  stairs,  and  with  no  clear  recog 
nition. 

"  Hello !  "  he  said.  "  I  think  I've  had  the  pleas 
ure  of  meeting  you  somewhere  before." 

Mary's  mouth  tightened.  She  had  herself  now 
well  in  hand.  She  shook  her  russet  head. 

"  I  guess  not,"  she  said. 

But  her  voice  betrayed  her. 

u  Good  Lord!  "  said  Beekman.  The  flush  deep 
ened  on  his  face.  With  one  hand  he  snatched  his 
yachting-cap  from  his  black  hair;  the  other  he  sud 
denly  held  out  to  her,  trembling.  "  Good  Lord !  "  he 
repeated,  this  time  with  something  that  was  nearly 


444         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

awe  in  his  tone.  "  I — I — it's  Violet!  Will  you ? 

Won't  you  please  shake  hands?  " 

Scarcely  less  amazed  by  his  manner  than  was  he 
by  her  appearance,  she  took  his  hand. 

Beekman  turned  to  someone  on  the  stairs  behind 
him. 

"  Get  out,  Mike ! "  he  said.  "  I've  found  a 
fviend." 

There  was  a  plucking  at  his  sleeve  and  the  mur 
mur  of  a  concerned  voice  from  the  rear. 

"No,"  said  Philip;  "get  out.  I  tell  you  that  I 
have  found  a  friend.  Go  down  to  the  tall  lady  and 
hand  her  your  money  and  then  make  tracks  for  the 
yacht.  You  may  tell  Mr.  Payne  that  I  shall  return 
in  an  hour." 

Again  a  muffled  protest  from  the  dangerous  stair 
way. 

"  Pardon  me  a  moment,"  said  Beekman,  and 
turned  full  around.  "  Now,  then,"  he  continued  to 
his  guide,  "  you  get  out.  I  am  perfectly  well  able 
to  take  care  of  myself,  and  I  want  a  private  talk. 
Do  you  expect  me  to  kick  you  downstairs?  No?  I 
should  probably  break  your  back  if  I  did. — Then, 
good-night." 

He  stood  there  while  the  deckhand's  heavy  feet 
clattered  downward;  waited  until  he  had  heard  Big 
Lou  grumblingly  give  Mike  the  means  of  exit,  and 
then  he  turned  again  to  Mary. 

"  What,"  he  rapidly  began,  and  his  handsome 
face  grew  once  more  earnest,  "  what  in  the  name  of 
heaven  are  you  doing  in  this  den? — No,"  he  con 
tinued,  raising  a  quick  hand;  "  don't  tell  me;  I  re 
member  how  I  sent  you  out  of  my  mother's  house 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         445 

and,  upon  my  word,  I'm  afraid  to  hear.  I  couldn't 
do  anything  else — but  I  don't  know.  Anyhow,  there's 
one  thing  sure:  you  need  money.  Well,  I  made  a 
little  in  the  game  to-night — not  much  for  Payne,  but 
a  good  slice  for  me — and  it's  yours — it's  yours — the 
Lord  knows  it  ought  to  go  to  you !  " 

She  had  tried  to  stop  him  until  he  spoke  of  money; 
but  when  he  mentioned  that,  she  let  him  run  on,  let 
him  search  his  pockets,  and  at  last  let  him  thrust 
something  into  her  open  hand. 

"  Here,"  he  said;  "  take  it;  take  it  as  a  favor 
to  me;  take  it,  and  remember  what  I  said  to 
you  in  Rose's.  Watch  your  chance;  get  out  of 
here;  and  for  God's  sake  go  back  to  your  own 
home." 

Her  fingers  closed  upon  the  bills  and  transferred 
them  to  her  stocking;  and  as  she  did  this  a  movement 
on  the  floor  made  them  both  turn. 

Bill  Stevens,  whom  Mary  had  forgotten  and 
whom  Beekman  had  not  seen,  gathered  himself  to 
gether,  and  at  last  stood  more  or  less  upright  upon 
his  unsteady  bowed  legs.  His  heavy  body  rocked 
uneasily,  but  his  dark  face,  with  its  bushy  brows  and 
sinister  eyes,  was  thrust  forward  glowering.  One 
sinewy  tattooed  hand  gripped  the  back  of  a  chair; 
the  other,  knotted  into  a  hard  fist,  he  raised  slowly 
toward  Beekman. 

"  It's  your  turn  to  go,"  he  said,  with  a  lingering 
oath.  ;'  This  here's  my  gal;  she  b'longs  to  me — an' 
so  does  any  money  she  gits." 

Instantly  Philip  was  his  old,  assured  self.  That 
quality  which  was  most  characteristic  of  him,  that 
curious  mixture  of  much  that  was  bitter  and  a  little 


446         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

that  was  sweet,  lighted  his  eyes  and  rang  in  his 
voice. 

"  Where  do  you  come  from?  "  he  asked,  smiling. 
"  You  look  as  if  you  got  out  of  a  trap-door,  like  the 
fairy  in  the  play." 

u  None  o'  your  business  where  I  come  from,"  said 
Bill.  "  The  point  is  where  I'll  send  you,  if  you  ain't 
careful." 

Mary,  who  did  not  like  the  looks  of  things,  tried 
to  interpose.  She  put  the  palms  of  her  hands  against 
the  sailor's  rough  cheeks. 

"  Listen,  Bill,"  she  said,  "  this  is  an  old  friend 
of  mine " 

"Likely!"  grunted  Bill. 

"  He  is,  though;  ain't  you?  "  Mary  appealed,  with 
a  sidelong  glance  at  Beekman. 

"  Certainly  I  am,"  said  Philip. 

Stevens  lowered  his  fist,  but  his  red  eyes  remained 
full  of  hate. 

"  I  don't  care  who  you  are,"  he  rumbled;  "  this 
here's  my  woman." 

"All  right,"  said  Beekman;  "that's  to  your 
credit,  I'm  sure:  a  man  is  known  by  the  woman  he 
keeps,  and  you  can't  have  a  better.  Only,  you  see, 
my  friend— 

"  I  ain't  yer  friend." 

Once  more  Mary  interposed. 

"  Just  sit  down,  Bill,"  she  urged.  "  Sit  down  an' 
have  a  drink  with  us.  You  can  hear  all  we  got  to 
say." 

Stevens  sank  into  a  chair,  but  when  Beekman, 
with  Mary  between  them,  pushed  the  bottle  toward 
Bill,  the  sailor  would  have  none  of  it. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         447 

"  I'll  stop  a  bit,"  he  said,  "  but  I  ain't  goin'  to 
drink  with  you,  an'  you  needn't  think  it." 

Philip  was  still  undisturbed. 

"  Have  it  your  own  way,"  he  said.  "  I  know  how 
it  is:  when  a  man  falls  in  love,  he  swears  off  liquor; 
when  he  falls  out  of  love  he  takes  to  liquor  again 
— one  sort  of  drunkenness  is  as  much  as  he  can  stand 
at  a  time.  I'll  take  a  drink." 

Mary,  who  now  began  to  fear  acute  trouble, 
slipped  a  hand  to  Stevens,  but  he  drew  away. 

"  I  think  I'll  smoke — if  I  may,"  continued  the  un 
disturbed  Beekman.  "  A  pipe  is  domestic,  a  cigar  is 
philosophic,  and  a  cigarette  is  a  cynic:  I  shall  have 
a  cigarette.  William?" — And  he  offered  his  silver 
case  to  the  sailor. 

"  No,"  said  Stevens,  shortly. 

Beekmah  tossed  his  head.  Mary  saw  his  gray 
eyes  snap. 

"  William,"  he  said,  "  you  have  got  to  learn  that 
the  best  girl  is  never  so  good  as  the  next.  And 
you  have  got  to  learn  manners.  If  you  won't 
behave  yourself  properly,  I  think  you  had  better 
leave." 

Stevens's  fingers  opened  and  closed  slowly. 

"  You  go  to  hell,"  he  said. 

Beekman  rose  quietly.  His  cigarette  was  in  one 
hand,  and  with  the  other,  instead  of  threatening,  he 
pointed  to  the  stairway. 

"  Run  along,"  he  said. 

Stevens  jumped  to  his  feet  and  crouched,  like  a 
panther  ready  to  spring.  Mary,  overturning  her 
chair,  flung  her  arms  about  him  and  pinioned  him  in 
an  embrace. 


448         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  Don't,  Bill !  "  she  whispered,  and,  over  her 
shoulder:  "Don't,  Mr.  Beekman !  Can't  you  two 
be  friends?  Can't  you  see  it's  all  right,  Bill?  Can't 
you  let  him  alone,  Mr.  Beekman?  Bill,  you  know 
how  much  I  think  of  you." 

She  put  her  lips  to  his  rough  face.  She  whispered 
rapid,  unthought  lies  into  his  ear.  She  caressed  and 
cajoled  him,  and  at  last,  when  Philip  had  been  per 
suaded  into  a  half-scornful  apology,  she  managed 
to  get  Stevens  out  of  the  room  and  started  him  down 
the  stairway  to  seek  sympathy  of  Big  Lou  while  she 
herself  had  her  talk  with  Beekman. 

They  sat  down  again  at  the  round  table  and  took 
a  drink.  Philip  wanted  to  upbraid  himself  for  his 
conduct  to  her  in  his  mother's  house,  and  yet,  be 
cause  he  felt  that  he  could  have  followed  no  course 
save  that  which  he  had  taken,  he  did  not  know  how 
to  begin :  all  that  he  was  sure  of  was  that  there  was 
a  wrong  somewhere,  and  that  he  must  somehow  make 
confession  of  it.  Mary,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
divided  between  panic  from  the  trouble  so  lately 
avoided  and  a  desire  to  hear  from  Philip  nothing 
approaching  condolence. 

She  sought  escape  in  the  commonplace. 

"  You  mustn't  mind  him,"  she  said,  with  a  nod 
toward  the  stairs  down  which  the  glowering  Bill  had 
departed. 

"  Not  a  bit,"  answered  Beekman.  "  I  only  wanted 
to  get  rid  of  him  in  order  to  tell  you  how  sorry  I 
am  for — for — oh,  you  know." 

"  Don't  talk  about  that,  Mr.  Beekman — please." 

"  But  I  must  talk  about  it." 

"Not  now;  not  yet.     Tell  me  how  you  are." 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         449 

"  Oh,  I'm  as  near  right  as  I  ever  am,  or  ever  will 
be.  But,  Violet— 

"  You're  looking  rich." 

His  eyes  followed  hers  to  his  gilt-buttoned  yacht 
ing  jacket. 

"  You  can  never  judge  a  man  by  his  clothes,"  he 
said.  "  Necessity  is  the  mother  of  pretension." 

"  Are  you  married  yet?  " 

"  Hardly.  There  are  only  two  things  that  a  man 
can't  honestly  promise :  to  love,  and  to  cease  to  love. 
I'm  still  too  poor  to  afford  those  lies." 

Mary  only  half  understood  his  mood,  but  she 
was  wholly  intent  on  keeping  him  free  of  dreaded 
topics. 

"  Do  you  hear  anything  of  the  people  we  used  to 
know?"  she  asked. 

"  Well,"  said  Philip,  "  Rose  was  let  off,  you  know, 
and  is  back  at  the  old  address  and  the  old  business." 
He  looked  at  his  watch  and  started.  "  By  Jove,"  he 
continued;  "  I  must  have  been  pretty  tight.  I  had 
no  idea  it  was  so  late.  I've  got  to  be  getting  back 
to  the  yacht  soon." 

He  stood  up,  his  cap  in  one  hand.  Mary  followed 
him  to  the  stair  door,  and  there  he  turned. 

"  Violet,"  he  said,  "  I  am  going  to  tell  you  how 
sorry  I  am.  I  am  going  to  tell  you,  whether  you 
like  to  hear  it  or  not." 

The  flush  had  gone  from  his  face  and  eyes,  leaving 
them  simple  and  sincere. 

Mary's  voice  faltered.  She  understood  some 
things  that  she  had  never  before  understood. 

"  It  didn't  matter  none,"  she  replied.  "  You 
couldn't  help  it." 


450        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I  daresay  I  couldn't.  I  don't  know.  These 
things  are  too  much  for  me.  But  I  do  know  that 
I  am  sorry — sorry  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart. 
And  if  I  can  ever  do  anything — anything " 

He  put  out  his  hand,  and,  as  she  took  it,  he  raised 
her  hand  to  his  lips. 

At  that  instant  there  was  a  yell  of  rage  from  be 
hind  him.  Mary,  springing  back,  saw  him  half  turn 
and  reel.  She  saw  a  brown,  tattooed  hand  close 
about  his  throat,  choking  his  cry  of  alarm.  She  saw 
Bill  Stevens's  distorted  face  and  red  eyes  appear 
above  Beekman's  shoulder.  She  saw  a  knife  flash 
and  bury  itself  deep  in  the  young  man's  side.  And 
then,  with  a  tremendous  smash,  both  men  disap 
peared  down  those  murderous,  black  stairs. 

It  seemed  to  Mary  that  she  lost  not  a  moment  in 
running  down  to  them;  yet,  when  she  reached  the  hall, 
the  little  drama  was  finished.  The  sailor  was  lying 
stunned  in  a  corner,  and  Big  Lou,  with  the  rescued 
lamp  beside  her,  was  kneeling  above  Philip's 
body  and  running  her  quick  claws  through  his 
pockets. 

"  Damn  your  soul,  get  upstairs  I  "  she  cried  to 
Mary. 

But  Mary  hesitated.  Overhead  she  heard  the 
skurry  of  skirts  and  hurried  feet.  Before  her  lay 
the  man  that  had  once  so  harmed  her.  His  coat 
had  been  torn  open  and  a  great  red  smear  grew 
larger  and  larger  upon  his  white  silk  shirt.  His 
mouth  was  twisted,  but  still.  His  gray  eyes  stared 
at  the  begrimed  ceiling:  Philip  Beekman  was 
dead. 

She  leaped  across  the  body,  tore  back  the  bolts, 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         451 

flung  open  the  door,  and  nearly  fell  into  the  pitch- 
black  street. 

As  she  ran  around  the  nearest  corner,  she  heard 
the  cry  of  Mike,  the  deckhand,  who  must  have  been 
waiting  nearby,  and  then  the  sharp  alarm-call  of  a 
policeman's  night-stick. 


XXX 

HER  FATHER'S  HOUSE 

HER  way  must  have  led  her  first  to  the  river 
and  then  well  northward :  she  did  not  know. 
She  did  not  even  know  whether  she  ran 
or  walked.  All  that  she  did  know  was  that,  at  least 
for  hours  to  come,  she  must  put  as  many  miles  as 
she  could  between  her  own  tossing  thoughts  and  that 
still  face  with  the  staring  eyes  which  lay  at  the  foot 
of  the  steep,  dark  stairs  in  Summerton's.  The  clocks, 
had  she  looked  at  them,  would  have  told  her  that 
the  night  was  gone,  but  the  winter  darkness  still  en 
veloped  the  city  when  she  found  herself  at  last  stand 
ing  before  an  illuminated  ticket-window  and  address 
ing  a  sleepy  clerk  at  a  ferry. 

"  I  want  a  ticket,"  she  said,  and  laid  down  one 
of  the  bills  that  Philip  Beekman  had  given  her. 

"  Where  to?  "  yawned  the  clerk. 

How  did  it  happen  that  the  name  which  rose  to 
her  lips  was  the  name  of  her  native  town — a  word 
that  she  had  not  uttered  since  the  morning  of  her 
awakening  in  the  house  of  Rose  Legere?  Perhaps 
it  was  because  the  dead  man  had,  with  almost  his 
last  words,  pleaded  with  her  to  go  home;  perhaps 
it  was  because  that  name,  of  which  she  had  for  so 
long  tried  never  to  think,  was,  in  reality,  the  one 
always  nearest  to  her  heart;  perhaps  it  was  only  be 
cause  no  other  town  was  familiar  to  her.  In  any 

452 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         453 

event,  the  name  was  spoken  without  consideration 
of  the  consequences,  and,  before  she  had  time  to 
pause  or  to  repent,  the  clerk  had  handed  her  the 
change,  and  with  it  the  bit  of  pasteboard  that  would 
bear  her  home. 

"There's  a  boat  in  ten  minutes,"  he  said:  "but 
you'll  have  to  wait  an  hour  in  Jersey  City.  The 
first  train  doesn't  go  till  six-five." 

Of  what  immediately  followed  she  had,  thereafter, 
no  clear  recollection.  She  remembered  only  buying 
a  cold  sandwich  and  a  half-pint  of  whiskey  in  a 
deserted  cafe;  crossing  a  bitterly  cold,  sullen  stretch 
of  water  from  a  twinkling  canon  to  a  shadowy  shore ; 
walking,  for  warmth,  weary  though  she  was,  up  and 
down,  and  up  and  down,  along  a  damp,  echoing 
train-shed,  and  then,  at  last,  passing  a  clanging  iron 
gate,  climbing  into  a  coach,  and  falling,  nearly  stupe 
fied,  into  an  uncomfortable,  red-plush  covered  seat. 
She  had  but  the  faintest  mental  picture  of  changing 
cars,  and  none  at  all  of  any  subsequent  incident,  until, 
in  a  black  dawn,  there  flashed  upon  her,  from  be 
tween  the  frost-figures  on  the  window,  a  bit  of  land 
scape  that  warned  her  she  was  approaching  home. 

The  track  came  suddenly  to  the  river-side.  Be 
neath  a  gray  sky,  which,  though  the  morning  was 
well  advanced,  the  sun  seemed  afraid  to  climb,  there 
raced  the  mile-and-a-half  wide  strip  of  gray  water. 
It  crashed  across  a  ruined  dam;  it  swept  above  a 
submerged  "  chute  "  through  which,  years  before, 
the  big  pine-rafts  from  the  upper  Alleghanies  used 
to  be  hurled  on  their  way  to  the  Chesapeake.  There 
had  been  a  thaw:  only  here  and  there  could  Mary 
see  the  ominous  crests  of  the  rocks  that  threatened 


454        THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

the  mid-channel;  the  islands,  with  trees  bare  of 
foliage,  were  under  water,  and  far  away,  from  the 
cloudy  York  County  shore,  the  high  hills  rose  above 
the  mist,  dun  and  cheerless,  forbidding  and  cold. 
With  a  quick  catch  in  her  throat,  she  saw  the  river- 
road  that  she  had  so  often  tramped  on  holidays,  now 
axle-deep  in  mud.  Over  there  were  the  leafless 
woods  where,  when  the  boughs  were  green,  the  chil 
dren  used  to  picnic,  and  here,  nearer  the  town,  where 
patches  of  soiled  snow  hid  under  the  stunted  pines, 
was  the  path  where  one  time  came,  for  pink  laurel 
branches,  a  girl  that  she  had  been.  The  engine 
whistled  sharply  and  stopped. 

Mary  mechanically  readjusted  the  hat  that  she 
had  not  touched  since  she  had  put  it  on  for  the  work 
of  the  evening  previous — the  evening  so  long  ago. 
She  stepped  to  the  platform. 

The  station  was  just  as  it  had  always  been.  It 
looked  smaller  and  dirtier,  but  she  knew  that  it  had 
not  changed;  and  a  sharp  pain  shot  through  her 
heart  at  the  realization  that,  in  this  town,  everything 
had  gone  on  its  placid  way  while  so  much  had  been 
happening  to  one  of  its  children.  There  were  the 
same  grinning  gamins  waiting  for  the  New  York 
newspapers;  the  same  negro  porters  from  the  two 
hotels;  the  same  station-master  "calling  the  train," 
just  as  he  used  to  call  it  in  the  days  when  she  had 
watched  the  outgoing  coaches  with  envious  longings 
for  a  sight  of  the  strange  lands  toward  which  they 
were  bound. 

Then,  as  her  aching  feet  touched  the  cinder  of 
the  thoroughfare,  she  realized  her  danger.  She  had 
no  plan,  no  scheme  of  accounting  for  herself;  some 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         455 

unreasoned  impulse,  partly,  doubtless,  the  primal  in 
stinct  that  drives  the  wounded  beast  to  its  den,  had 
overcome  her  fears  and  turned  her  face  in  the  direc 
tion  of  the  home  whither  she  had,  for  so  long, 
dreaded  to  return.  But  now  she  was  seized  with  a 
terror  of  recognition  by  the  townspeople,  and  so  she 
lowered  her  head  and  walked,  with  the  swiftness  of 
panic,  among  the  little  knot  of  loafers  about  the 
station-door. 

Now  that  she  was  here,  what  was  she  to  say,  what 
to  do,  where  to  turn?  She  moved,  unable  to  evolve 
any  order  from  the  chaos  of  her  thoughts.  She  could 
only  go  over  and  over  the  memory  of  that  last  day 
in  school;  the  early  violets,  purple  and  fragrant, 
peeping  through  the  lush  grass  on  the  lawns  of  Sec 
ond  Street;  the  flaming  oriole  in  the  Southwark  yard; 
the  lazy  sunlight  flowing  through  the  open  windows 
of  Miss  England's  sleepy  classroom.  Mary's  blue 
eyes  were  bright  then,  her  mouth  was  red,  her  cheeks 
pink;  lithe,  strong-limbed,  and  firm  of  body,  her 
walk  had  owned  the  easy,  languid  grace  of  a  wild 
animal.  And  now,  the  lawns  were  bare;  only  a  few 
persistent  sparrows  hopped  in  the  gutters  and  along 
the  ground;  the  sky  was  empty  of  sunlight,  and 
she 

She  came  to  a  supreme  pause.  Habit  had  led  her 
aimless  feet.  She  was  standing,  in  the  full  morning, 
before  the  two-story  brick  house  that  was  her  father's 
home. 

She  knew  that  the  door  remained  unlocked  from 
dawn  to  night;  but  she  did  not  at  once  enter.  She 
was  afraid  to  go  in,  afraid  to  stand  still,  afraid  to 
go  away. 


456         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

Then,  from  the  next  house,  came  decision.  It  was 
Etta's,  her  married  sister's  place,  and  she  heard 
someone  within  it  rattle  at  its  door.  Anything  was 
better  than  a  meeting  with  Etta:  Mary  quietly 
opened  the  door  to  her  father's  house  and  slipped 
inside. 

She  went  down  the  brief,  darkened  hallway,  past 
the  drawn  curtains  of  the  parlor,  through  the  twi 
light  of  the  dining-room,  and  stopped  at  the  open 
entrance  to  the  small,  crowded  kitchen,  where,  among 
neatly  arranged  and  brightly  polished  pots  and 
pans,  her  mother  was  bending  over  the  glowing 
stove. 

Mrs.  Denbigh  looked  up  with  a  start.  Still 
stooped,  still  hatchet-faced,  but  grayer  and  more 
shrunken,  she  stood  there,  her  sleeves  rolled  from  her 
thin  forearms,  her  forehead  wet  by  present  labor,  her 
mouth  set  hard  by  labors  gone. 

"  Get  out  o'  herel  "  she  said. 

"Mom!" 

Mary  raised  and  spread  her  arms  in  quick  petition 
ing,  and  then,  in  that  stranger,  Mrs.  Denbigh  recog 
nized  her  child. 

"You?"  she  cried. 

She  dashed  her  damp  hands  to  her  checkered 
apron;  she  stepped  toward  her  daughter  with  her 
own  arms  wide.  She  bent  to  kiss  her — and  she  drew 
as  suddenly  away. 

"  There's  liquor  on  your  breath !  "  she  gasped. 

"  I  know,"  said  Mary,  her  voice  low  and  tremb 
ling.  "  I — I  ain't  been  well,  mom." 

The  kiss  was  given,  but  less  abandonedly  than  it 
had  promised,  and,  as  the  mother  drew  away,  her 


THE  HOUSE  OE  BONDAGE         457 

keen  eyes  searched  the  girl  from  face  to  feet.  Over 
the  multitude  of  maternal  questions  there  rose  the 
three  for  which  Mary  was  least  prepared. 

"Mary — what  is  it?  Where  is  he?  Didn't  he 
treat  you  right?  " 

They  caught  the  girl  at  her  weakest  point. 

"Who?"  she  asked. 

"  Who?  " — Mrs.  Denbigh's  eyes  grew  stern  again. 
— "  Who?  You  needn't  say  no  more  than  that  still! 
I  ought  to  have  knowed  when  I  seen  you.  Nobody 
could  look  at  you  yet  and  not  know.  Why,  you're — 

you're  old!    Your  things  are  worn  out.     You " 

her  tone  increased  to  loud  accusations.  ''  Where  did 
you  get  them  clothes  ?  " 

Mary's  lips  faltered. 

"  I  bought  'em,"  she  said. 

"  Did  anybody  see  you  come  in  here?  " 

"  I  don't  know. — No,  nobody  did." 

"  Thank  God  for  that !  "  Mrs.  Denbigh  pointed 
a  long,  gnarled  finger  at  her  daughter.  She  pointed 
it  at  the  bedraggled  hat,  still  bearing  traces  of  a 
finery  too  pronounced  for  that  small  town.  She 
pointed  to  the  waist  and  to  the  skirt.  "  It's  true, 
then!  "  she  cried.  "  It's  true,  then!  You've  been  a 
bad  woman !  " 

In  the  doorway  Mary  swayed.  She  leaned  heav 
ily  against  the  wall.  She  was  too  tired  to  lie. 

"  Yes,"  she  whispered. 

'Yes,"  her  mother  echoed;  "yes — an'  you  own 
up  to  it!  The  whole  town  said  it;  your  pop  said  it; 
they  all  told  me  yet — an'  I  stood  up  fer  you;  I 
showed  'em  your  letter;  I  says  you  was  married;  I 
kep'  on  believin'  you'd  write ;  I  stuck  to  it — an'  now 


458         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

you  come  here  to  shame  me.  You  come  here  when 
you're  worn  out — when  no  one  else'll  have  you — you 
come  here,  brazen,  not  carin'  still,  a  bad  woman — 
a  bad  woman — an'  I  guess  you  think  I'll  take  you 
in!" 

Her  poor  face  writhed.  Her  dim  eyes  shot  fire. 
Her  withered  breasts  rose  and  fell  in  a  spasm  of 
indignation  and  wounded  pride. 

Mary,  still  leaning  against  the  kitchen  wall,  put 
out  her  hands  as  if  to  ward  away  a  blow. 

"  Don't,  mom,"  she  said.    "  Please  don't." 

"  I  will !  I've  a  mind  to  beat  you.  I'd  like  to 
know  what  possessed  you  to  flaunt  yourself  in  this 
place.  You  can't  stay  here.  You  can't  stay  in  this 
house  that  you've  shamed  still,  an'  you  can't  stay  in 
this  town." 

"Mom!" 

"  You  can't  stay  in  this  town.  Do  you  hear  that? 
If  you  do,  if  you  try  to  stay  here  and  mock  me,  a 
decent  woman,  I'll  have  you  arrested;  I'll  have  you 
sent  to  the  lock-up;  I'll " 

"  Mom,"  interrupted  Mary.  "  I  won't  hurt  you. 
I  didn't  mean  to  hurt  nobody.  I  didn't  come  here 
to  do  no  harm." 

"  How  kin  you  come  here  yet  without  doin'  harm  ? 
Ain't  you  done  enough  without  comin'  back  here  to 
shame  your  own  folks?" 

"  But,  mom,"  Mary  pleaded,  "  I  won't  shame  no 
body;  I'll  do  whatever  you  say." 

Little  Mrs.  Denbigh  collapsed  upon  a  kitchen 
chair.  She  rocked  from  side  to  side.  She  fanned 
herself  with  her  checkered  apron;  grief  conquered 
anger;  and  long  dried  tears  came  at  last  to  her  old 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         459 

eyes  and  coursed,  unrestrained,  down  her  hard 
cheeks. 

"What  did  I  ever  do  fer  to  deserve  this?"  she 
moaned.  ''  What  did  I  ever  do  to  receive  this  judg 
ment?  A  child  o'  mine!  A  child  o'  mine!  An'  her 
the  baby  that  she  was !  Didn't  her  pop  an'  me  bring 
her  up  the  best  we  could?  Ain't  I  always  lived  ac- 
cordin'  to  the  Lord's  word?  What  have  I  done  to 
deserve  this?  " 

Mary  stepped  to  the  weeping  woman's  side.  She 
put  her  fingers  to  the  gray  hair  and  stroked  it,  tim 
idly. 

"Go  away!"  cried  the  mother.  "Don't  you 
dare  to  touch  me  !  Don't  you  dare  yet  to  pollute  me ! 
Oh !  A  child  o'  mine  to  do  this !  " 

She  fell  into  another  paroxysm  of  grief,  and  Mary 
sank  to  her  knees  and  took  one  of  the  gnarled  hands 
between  her  own  hands. 

"  Listen,  mom,"  she  said;  "  I'll  tell  you  all  about 
it,  an'  then  you'll  know." 

She  did  tell  her,  as  much  as  she  dared;  but  Mrs. 
Denbigh  only  half  understood.  The  elder  woman's 
life  had  been  cast  in  a  mold;  it  had  long  since  hard 
ened  into  a  destined  shape,  and  no  sympathy  on  her 
own  part,  no  explanations  on  the  part  of  another, 
could  alter  her.  Dire  necessity  she  had  often  known, 
but  she  had  not  known  it  amid  surroundings  where 
the  sufferer's  only  course  was  that  which  alone  had 
been  possible  for  Mary.  If  she  softened,  it  was  not 
because  she  comprehended,  but  because  Mary  was 
her  child. 

"  Don't  tell  me  no  more,"  she  said  at  last.  "  You 
could  'a'  gone  to  work." 


460         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

"  I  tried  that,  an'  nobody'd  have  me." 
"  You  could  'a'  gone  to  some  church-folk." 
"  I  did,  but  they  couldn't  get  me  a  job." 
"  You  could  'a'  gone  to  some  institution  a'ready." 
"  How'd  I  have  lived  after  I  come  out?  " 
"  Well,  you  shouldn't  'a'  run  away  in  the  first 
place.    Didn't  we  treat  you  right?  " 

To  have  answered  that  question  in  the  negative 
would  not  have  been  to  be  altogether  true,  and  Mary 
did  not  even  yet  see  enough  clearly  to  discern  that 
the  conditions  which  had  driven  her  from  home  were 
economic  forces  that  made  parents  and  child  equally 
blameless. 

"Can't  I  stay  here?"  she  appealed.     "Can't  I 
please  stay  here  an'  work  for  you?  " 
Mrs.  Denbigh  shook  her  head. 
"  I'd  work  hard.    I'd  help  you.    I  wouldn't  never 
complain.    All  I  want  is  just  to  be  quiet.     I'd  work 
hard.    Nobody'd  never  know." 

"  It'd  be  all  over  town  by  evenin'  still." 
"  No,  it  wouldn't.     I'd  say  I  was  a  widow.     I'd 
say- 

"  Think  o'  your  pop,"  sobbed  Mrs.  Denbigh. 
"Why,  he'd— he'd  kill  you,  Mary!  "  The  mother 
shivered  as  she  considered  the  wrath  of  the  giant, 
whom  hard  work  had  hardened  past  the  touch  of 
all  the  tenderer  emotions.  "  He'd  just  beat  you  up 
an'  throw  you  into  the  street  for  everybody  to  see !  " 
She  half  rose  in  a  new  anxiety.  "  Why,  he's  on  the 
early  shift,  an'  he  might  come  here  'most  any  minute. 
Etta  might  come  in,  an'  Sallie'll  be  back  from  school 
soon." 

"  But,  mom,"  Mary  blindly  persisted.    "  I'd  work 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         461 

so  hard!  I  wouldn't  never  be  cross.  I'd  help  you. 
I'd  do  all  the  housework,  an'  you  could  teach  me  to 
cook  the  way  you  do." 

"  We  got  to  think  o'  Sallie  yet,"  continued  Mrs. 
Denbigh.  "  Every  time  she  gets  mad  now  she  says 
she'll  run  away  like  you  done.  We  got  to  think  o' 
her.  She's  a  growin'  girl,  an'  what'd  it  be  to  have 
you  around  her?  " 

"  But,  mom,  I  won't  hurt  her.  Can't  I  just  stay 
an'  work,  an'  wash  dishes,  an'  such  things?  I 
wouldn't  mind  washin'  dishes  " — Mary  smiled  wanly 
— "  like  I  once  did." 

"  An'  then  there's  Etta,"  said  the  mother,  still 
busied  in  her  own  confusion.  "  She's  got  a  baby " 

"  A  baby !  "     Mary's  heart  leaped. 

"  Such  a  lovely  baby  girl " 

"  Can't  I ?  Oh,  mom,  can't  I  just  get  a  peep 

at  it?" 

u  How  could  you? — An'  we  have  to  think  what 
it'd  be  for  her  if  you  was  here  an'  she  growed 
up." 

The  prodigal  choked  with  tears. 

"  Mom,  mom !  "  she  pleaded.  "  How'd  I  hurt 
'em?  You  don't  think  I'd ?  " 

"  The  town'd  think  so,  an'  the  town'd  tell  'em  so, 
too.  An'  anyways,  Mary,  we're  poor,  we're  dread 
ful  poor.  The  mill  was  shut  down  all  summer  an' 
fall.  It's  only  just  started  a'ready,  an'  it's  only 
workin'  half-time  now.  We  ain't  had  money  fer 
months  still,  an'  now  it  all  goes  fer  old  bills.  We 
couldn't  do  it,  even  if  we  wanted  to." 

For  half  an  hour  more  Mary  begged,  but  she 
begged  in  vain;  and  though  the  mother  ended  by 


462         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

another  attack  of  tears,  and  though  the  two  wept 
together  in  each  other's  arms,  they  knew  that  they 
were  together  for  the  last  time. 

"  Your  clothes  are  so  thin !  "  quavered  Mrs.  Den 
bigh,  with  a  pathetic  endeavor  to  sink  her  grief  in 
practical  anxiety.  "  You  ain't  got  no  coat,  an'  your 
feet  are  near  on  the  ground  still." 

Mrs.  Denbigh  had  no  money;  there  was  literally 
not  a  cent  in  the  house;  but  she  unearthed  from  an 
old  trunk,  and  pressed,  for  pawning,  upon  Mary, 
a  heavy,  old-fashioned  gold  bracelet,  which  had  been 
a  wedding-present;  and,  though  the  daughter  pro 
tested  that  she  had  money  enough  to  buy  some 
clothes,  the  mother  got  her  own  coat  upon  the  daugh 
ter's  shoulders. 

They  were  still  standing  in  the  kitchen,  as  women 
awaiting  the  summons  of  death,  when  first  one 
steam-whistle  and  then  another  began  to  call  across 
the  town.  It  was  noon,  and  the  moment  of  puddler 
Denbigh's  return. 

Without  a  word  they  walked,  hand  in  hand,  across 
the  short  back-yard,  for  Mary,  it  was  tacitly  agreed, 
must  not  risk  an  appearance  upon  the  street  in  the 
neighborhood  of  her  father's  house.  Without  a 
word,  Mrc.  Denbigh's  knotted  fingers  opened  the 
latch  of  the  white-washed  gate.  Without  a  word 
mother  and  daughter  flung  themselves  into  each 
other's  arms  again,  and  then,  still  in  silence,  Mary 
trudged  away. 

She  did  not  look  back  until  she  came  to  the  first 
corner,  and,  when  she  got  there,  she  saw  her  mother's 
shrunken  body  still  at  the  gate,  the  old  hand  waving, 
the  aproned  figure  shaking  with  sobs.  It  was  still 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         463 

there  when  Mary  reached  the  second  corner;  but 
when  she  turned  at  the  third,  it  was  gone. 

Her  pain  was  no  longer  poignant.  Grief  had 
reached  the  mark  whence  it  passes  to  stupefaction; 
and  Mary  pursued  her  way  as  if  her  actions  were 
those  suggested  to  a  subject  of  hypnotic  control.  In 
order  to  avoid  the  crowd  at  the  station,  she  walked 
on  up  the  alley,  until  the  alley  ended  in  an  inter 
secting  turnpike  along  which  ran  the  trolley  line  to 
the  county-town.  She  waited  there,  stolidly,  for  a 
car,  mounted  that,  descended  at  the  end  of  the  road, 
and,  after  another  delay,  climbed  upon  a  train  that 
would  take  her  without  change  to  Jersey  City.  For 
nearly  twenty- four  hours  she  had  eaten  nothing;  but 
she  bought  another  small  flask  at  the  terminus,  and, 
as  the  ferry-boat  glided  between  the  creaking  slips 
into  the  tossing  water,  she  took  a  deep  draught  of 
whiskey. 

She  walked  to  the  stern  and  looked  over  the  side. 
It  was  night.  Here  gleamed  the  railway  signs  under 
which  the  boat  had  just  passed — the  signs  of  those 
roads  that,  she  had  now  discovered,  ended  as  fatally 
for  her  freedom  as  if  they  had  ended  in  an  insur 
mountable  wall.  Ahead  towered  the  other  walls,  the 
black  walls  of  that  living  prison — that  vast,  malev 
olent,  conscious  jail — into  which  she  had  once  gone 
with  such  a  store  of  hopes  whereof  not  one  had  ever 
been  fulfilled,  of  anticipated  pleasures  whereof  not 
one  had  ever  been  tasted,  and  to  which  she  must  now, 
to  serve  out  a  life-sentence,  return. 

Must  she  return? 

She  looked  up  and  down  the  dismal  river,  crowded 
with  trafficking  craft,  and  she  remembered  that  other 


464         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

river  at  home  as  she  had  seen  it  on  the  spring  after 
noon  when  she  had  played  the  truant  from  school. 
She  remembered  the  swirling  eddies  across  which 
the  nearer  hills  had  been  changing  from  brown  to 
green;  she  remembered  the  descending  Donegal  Val 
ley,  fresh  with  germinating  life,  the  flowering  shrubs, 
and  the  sap-wet  trees  along  the  shore,  the  scent  of 
a  warm  April,  and  the  music  of  the  Susquehanna. 
These  things  she  remembered,  and  then  she  looked 
again  at  the  nearing  city. 

Must  she  return? 

She  touched  the  rail.  Over  that  lay  certain  escape. 
The  deck  was  deserted;  the  movement  would  be 
quick;  the  plunge 

She  leaned  forward,  she  saw  the  leaping,  greedy, 
icy  waves,  and,  with  a  loud  sob,  staggered  back  to 
the  bench  that  ran  along  the  exterior  of  the  upper 
saloon. 

She  could  not  do  it.  With  nothing  but  suffering 
and  horrors  to  live  for,  she  could  not  put  an  end  to 
life.  She  was  afraid  of  the  cold;  she  was  afraid 
of  the  struggle;  she  was  afraid  of  the  pang;  she  was 
afraid  of  Death.  It  was  a  new  thing — Death;  she 
had  been  afraid  of  it  ever  since  that  morning  of  her 
awakening  when  the  thought  of  seeking  it  had  first 
occurred  to  her.  Since  her  first  crossing  of  this 
water,  her  experiences  had  been  a  procession  of  new 
things,  each  more  terrible  than  the  last;  she  had 
come  to  dread  the  new,  and  this  novelty  of  death 
she  dreaded  lest  it  should  be  the  most  terrible  of  all. 
Life,  which  had  robbed  her  of  everything  else,  had, 
at  this  last,  robbed  her  of  the  courage  to  quit  it. 

Youth,  hope,  purity,  strength,  beauty,  the  ability 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE         465 

to  work,  even  lust  and  hate — all  these  were  dead 
within  her,  dead  beyond  possibility  of  resurrection. 
If  Max  had  only  given  her  a  child!  If  he,  or  any 
one  of  the  others,  had  only  killed  her !  But  they 
had  murdered  Love,  and  the  only  thing  that  lived 
in  her  was  the  fear  of  death. 

Out  of  the  bitterness  of  her  own  heart,  out  of  the 
abysses  of  her  own  knowledge  of  things  as  they  are, 
she  saw  much  of  the  truth.  A  rare  good  fortune  had 
favored  Katie  Flanagan;  but  Mary,  her  parents,  Rose 
and  her  girls,  Carrie,  Policeman  Riley  and  Magistrate 
Dyker,  even  Angel  and  Max — not  one  of  them,  well 
regarded,  could  be  unequivocally  condemned.  They 
were  all,  preying  or  preyed  upon,  an  inevitable  result. 
They  were  but  the  types  of  millions  everywhere. 
New  York  itself,  with  all  its  women-slaves  and  men- 
slaves,  must  be  but  an  illustration  of  what  the  other 
cities  of  the  world  are  and  have  been.  No  rescue  of 
a  slave  could  put  an  end  to  the  slavery.  Something 
was  wrong;  but  what  that  something  was,  or  how  it 
was  ever  to  be  made  right,  she  could  not  guess.  She 
knew  only  that,  down  the  years,  wherever  walked  the 
great  god  Poverty,  that  great  god  led  Prostitution  by 
the  hand. 

Finally  comprehending,  if  unable  to  formulate, 
these  things,  at  ten  o'clock  that  night  Mary  Denbigh, 
remembering  what  Philip  Beekman  had  told  her, 
rang  the  doorbell  of  a  familiar  house  and  faced  what 
she  would  once  have  feared  more  than  death — she 
faced  complacent,  untroubled,  prosperous,  and  pro 
tected  Rose  Legere. 

The  woman,  still  the  good-natured  woman  of  the 
brewery-calendar,  cut  short  Mary's  flow  of  apologies. 


466         THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE     , 

"  Ferget  it,"  she  said.  "  It  don't  matter  what 
you  did.  You  didn't  know  any  better.  Here:  just 
take  this  ten  dollars  and  tell  me  what  else  I  can  do 
for  you." 

And  Mary  pushed  the  money  away. 

"  I  don't  want  that,"  she  said.  "  I  want — oh, 
Miss  Rose,  won't  you  please  take  me  back?  " 

But  Rose,  surveying  the  human  ruin  before  her, 
shook,  very  positively,  her  masses  of  yellow  hair. 

"  No,"  she  answered,  "  I'm  sorry,  but  I  can't  do 
that.  It  wouldn't  be  good  business.  You  see,  the 
life's  got  you,  Violet:  you're  all  in." 


EDITOR'S   NOTE 

The  facts  presented  in  the  "  House  of  Bondage  " 
are  so  startling  as  to  seem  incredible.  They  are, 
however,  well  known  to  those  who  have  become 
familiar  with  the  problem  of  the  social  evil,  and  can 
be  duplicated  indefinitely  from  court  records,  the  find 
ings  of  various  investigating  bodies,  such  as  the  Con 
gressional  Commission,  whose  report  on  this  subject 
is  known  as  Senate  Document  No.  196,  Importing 
Women  for  Immoral  Purposes,  being  a  partial  report 
from  the  Immigration  Commission  on  the  Importa* 
tion  and  Harboring  of  Women  for  Immoral  Purposes, 
published  December  10,  1909,  a  book  entitled  "Pan 
ders  and  Their  White  Slaves,"  by  Clifford  G.  Roe,  in 
which  the  author  gives  in  detail  many  cases  success 
fully  prosecuted  by  him  in  Chicago  in  the  last  year 
or  two;  and  from  the  sworn  testimony  taken  before 
the  special  Grand  Jury  appointed  in  New  York  in 
January,  1910,  to  investigate  the  so-called  White 
Slave  Traffic,  the  full  report  of  which  investigation 
follows. 


467 


WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC 


Presentment  of  the  Additional  Grand  Jury  for  the 
January  Term  of  the  Court  of  General  Sessions  in  the 
County  of  New  York,  in  the  matter  of  the  investigation 
as  to  the  alleged  existence  in  the  County  of  New  York  of 
an  organized  traffic  in  women  for  immoral  purposes. 


Filed  June  29,  igio 


468 


COURT  OF  GENERAL  SESSIONS  IN  AND  FOR 
THE  CITY  AND  COUNTY  OF  NEW  YORK. 

In  the  matter  of  the  Investigation  as  to  the  alleged  exist 
ence  in  the  County  of  New  York  of  an  organized 
traffic  in  women  for  immoral  purposes. 

To  the  Hon.  THOMAS  C.  O'SULLIVAN,  Judge  of  the 

Court  of  General  Sessions. 
Sir: 

We,  the  members  of  the  Additional  Grand  Jury  for  the 
January  term,  1910,  respectfully  present  as  follows: 

In  the  charge  delivered  to  us  by  Your  Honor  on  the  3rd 
day  of  January,  1910,  Your  Honor  said: 

"  There  have  been  spread  broadcast  in  the  public  prints 
statements  that  the  City  of  New  York  is  a  center  or  clearing 
house  for  an  organized  traffic  in  women  for  immoral  pur 
poses,  or  what  has  come  to  be  known  as  the  '  white  slave ' 
traffic.  Some  of  these  statements  may  have  been  published 
with  ulterior  motive  and  may  have  been  mere  sensationalism, 
but  some  are  said  to  be  based  upon  official  investigation  and 
charges  made  by  persons  who  profess  to  have  knowledge  of 

the  fact. 

#####*# 

"  This  traffic  in  women,  it  is  charged,  follows  two  main 
objects:  First,  the  procuring  of  women  of  previous  chaste 
character,  who  through  force,  duress,  or  deceit  are  finally 
made  to  live  lives  of  prostitution ;  second,  the  procuring  of 
women  who  are  already  prostitutes  and  placing  them  with 

their  consent  in  houses  where  they  may  ply  their  trade. 

*  *  *  *    '        *  #  # 

"  But  the  main  object,  gentlemen,  which  I  desire  you 
to  keep  in  mind  throughout  your  investigation  is  the  un 
covering  not  alone  of  isolated  offenses,  but  of  an  organiza 
tion,  if  any  such  exists,  for  a  traffic  in  the  bodies  of  women. 

460 


470  WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC 

"  You  should  make  your  investigation  sufficiently  broad 
to  cover  not  only  present  conditions,  but  also  conditions 
existing  in  the  past  within  the  statute  of  limitations. 

"  I  charge  you  that  it  is  your  duty  to  pursue  this  inquiry 
into  every  channel  open  to  you  and  to  present  to  the  court 
the  facts  found  by  you." 

Pursuant  to  Your  Honor's  instructions,  we  have  made  an 
investigation  into  the  matters  referred  to  in  Your  Honor's 
charge.  We  have  called  before  our  body  every  person  whom 
we  could  find  who  we  had  reason  to  believe  might  have 
information  on  the  subject.  Among  others  were  the  fol 
lowing:  a  member  of  the  National  Immigration  Commis 
sion  assigned  to  investigate  conditions  relating  to  importing, 
seducing,  and  dealing  in  women  in  the  City  of  New  York; 
the  author  of  an  article  which  appeared  in  McClure's 
Magazine  for  November,  1909,  entitled  "  The  Daughters  of 
the  Poor  " ;  a  former  under  sheriff  in  the  County  of  Essex, 
New  Jersey ;  the  President  of  the  New  York  Society  for  the 
Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children ;  the  author  of  a  pamphlet 
entitled  "  The  White  Slave  Traffic  " ;  a  member  of  the  New 
York  State  Immigration  Commission  appointed  by  Governor 
Hughes  in  1908;  a  former  Police  Commissioner  of  the  City 
of  New  York;  detectives  and  other  agents  especially  em 
ployed  in  connection  with  this  investigation;  members  and 
ex-members  of  the  New  York  Independent  Benevolent  Asso 
ciation  ;  witnesses  in  the  specific  cases  presented  to  this  Grand 
Jury,  as  well  as  a  number  of  other  citizens.  In  addition,  the 
foreman,  the  District  Attorney  and  his  Assistants,  have  in 
terviewed  representatives  of  the  following  organizations: 

The  Committee  of  Fourteen;  its  Research  Committee; 
The  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children; 
The  New  York  Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Vice; 
The  Charity  Organization  Society; 

The  Society  for  Improving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor; 
The  Committee  on  Amusements  and  Vacation  Resources 
of  Working  Girls; 

The  Society  for  Social  and  Moral  Prophylaxis; 


WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC  471 

The  Florence  Crittenden  Mission; 

The  New  York  Probation  Association; 

The  Headworkers  of  various  Social  Settlements; 

The  Women's  Municipal  League; 

The  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Crime; 

The  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research. 

We  also  published  in  the  daily  press  of  this  city  on  the  6th 
day  of  May  the  following: 

"  The  Additional  Grand  Jury,  sworn  in  in  January  by 
Judge  O'Sullivan  of  the  Court  of  General  Sessions,  was 
charged  with  the  investigation  of  the  truth  or  falsity  of 
certain  statements  which  had  been,  publicly  made  during 
the  past  few  months  to  the  effect  that  the  City  of  New  York 
is  a  center  or  clearing  house  for  an  organized  traffic  in  women 
for  immoral  purposes,  or  what  has  come  to  be  known  as 
the  '  white-slave  traffic.' 

"  Pursuant  to  this  charge  the  Grand  Jury  has  been  seek 
ing  legal  evidence  on  this  subject  from  all  available  sources. 
The  information  which  many  citizens  have  volunteered  to 
give  has  proved  in  most  cases  to  be  general  rather  than 
specific. 

"  Before  closing  its  investigation  the  Grand  Jury  desires 
to  announce  publicly  that  it  will  be  glad  to  receive  definite, 
specific  information  as  to  the  existence  in  this  county  of  any 
traffic  in  women  for  immoral  purposes  from  any  citizen 
or  official  or  other  individual  who  has  such  information. 
Those  who  are  willing  to  assist  the  Grand  Jury  in  its  in 
vestigation  are  asked  to  call  at  the  office  of  James  B.  Rey 
nolds,  Assistant  District  Attorney,  Criminal  Court  Build 
ing  (within  the  next  week).  It  will  save  the  time  of  many 
individuals  and  of  Mr.  Reynolds  if  only  those  appear  who 
are  willing  and  able  to  present  facts  regarding  the  specific 
matter  above  stated. 

"  On  behalf  of  the  Additional  January  Grand  Jury. 

"JOHN  D.  ROCKEFELLER,  JR., 
"  Foreman." 

As  a  part  of  this  investigation  evidence  has  been  presented 
to  us  and  we  have  found  54  indictments: 
22  for  rape; 
16  for  abduction;     ' 


472  WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC 

10  for  maintaining  disorderly  houses,  7  of  which  were 
Raines- Law  Hotels; 

6  for  the  violation  of  Section  24^0  of  the  Penal  Law,  en 
titled  "  Compulsory  Prostitution  of  Women." 

We  have  found  no  evidence  of  the  existence  in  the  County 
of  New  York  of  any  organization  or  organizations,  in 
corporated  or  otherwise,  engaged  as  such  in  the  traffic  in 
women  for  immoral  purposes,  nor  have  we  found  evidence 
of  an  organized  traffic  in  women  for  immoral  purposes. 

It  appears,  on  the  other  hand,  from  indictments  found  by 
us  and  from  the  testimony  of  witnesses  that  a  trafficking 
in  the  bodies  of  women  does  exist  and  is  carried  on  by  in 
dividuals  acting  for  their  own  individual  benefit,  and  that 
these  persons  are  known  to  each  other  and  are  more  or  less 
informally  associated. 

We  have  also  found  that  associations  and  clubs,  com 
posed  mainly  or  wholly  of  those  profiting  from  vice,  have 
existed,  and  that  one  such  association  still  exists.  These 
associations  and  clubs  are  analogous  to  commercial  bodies 
in  other  fields,  which,  while  not  directly  engaged  in  com 
merce,  are  composed  of  individuals  all  of  whom  as  individuals 
are  so  engaged. 

The  "  incorporated  syndicates "  and  "  international 
bands  "  referred  to  in  published  statements,  we  find  to  be 
such  informal  relations  as  have  just  been  spoken  of,  while  the 
"  international  headquarters,"  "  clearing  houses  "  and  "  pre 
tentious  clubhouses  "  mentioned  are  cafes  or  other  so-called 
"  hang-outs  "  where  people  interested  in  the  various  branches 
of  the  business  resort.  These  and  the  houses  of  prostitu 
tion  are  also  referred  to  as  "  markets." 

The  "  dealers "  and  "  operators "  are  the  so-called 
"  pimps  "  and  "  procurers,"  the  "  pimp  "  being  referred  to  as 
the  "  retailer  "  and  the  manager  of  houses  as  the  "  whole 
saler." 

The  only  association  composed  mainly  or  wholly  of  those 
profiting  from  vice,  of  the  present  existence  of  which  we 


WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC  473 

have  evidence,  is  the  New  York  Independent  Benevolent 
Association,  organized  in  this  city  in  1894  and  incorporated 
in  1896.  This  association  has  had  an  average  membership 
of  about  100.  Its  alleged  purpose  is  to  assist  its  members 
in  case  of  illness,  to  give  aid  in  case  of  death,  and  to  assure 
proper  burial  rites. 

After  an  exhaustive  investigation  into  the  activities  of 
the  association  and  of  its  members  we  find  no  evidence  that 
the  association  as  such  does  now  or  has  ever  trafficked 
in  women,  but  that  such  traffic  is  being  or  has  been  carried 
on  by  various  members  as  individuals.  We  find  that  the 
members  of  this  association  are  scattered  in  many  cities 
throughout  the  United  States.  From  the  testimony  ad 
duced  it  appears  probable  that  the  social  relations  of  the 
members  and  the  opportunity  thereby  afforded  of  com 
municating  with  one  another  in  various  cities  have  facilitated 
the  conduct  of  their  individual  business. 

On  one  occasion  where  a  member  was  convicted  of 
maintaining  a  disorderly  house  and  a  fine  of  $r,ooo  was 
imposed  upon  him  in  the  City  of  Newark,  New  Jersey,  the 
association  voted  $500  for  his  aid.  On  another  occasion  in 
the  City  of  Newark,  New  Jersey,  where  several  of  the  mem 
bers  of  the  association  were  arrested  on  the  charge  of  keeping 
and  maintaining  disorderly  houses,  and  one  member  was  in 
prison,  the  then  President  went  to  Newark,  declared  to  the 
Under  Sheriff  that  he  was  the  President  of  the  New  York 
Independent  Benevolent  Association,  and  entered  into  nego 
tiations  with  the  authorities  in  Newark  on  behalf  of  the 
members  who  had  been  arrested.  We  have,  however,  no 
evidence  of  any  such  instance  in  the  County  of  New 
York. 

It  appears  from  the  testimony  of  various  members  and  ex- 
members  of  the  said  association  that  its  membership  is 
almost  entirely  composed  of  persons  who  are  now  or  have 
been  engaged  in  the  operation  of  disorderly  houses  or  who 
are  living  or  have  lived  directly  or  indirectly  upon  the 


474  WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC 

proceeds  of  women's  shame.  None  of  these  witnesses,  in  an 
swer  to  specific  questions,  could  name  more  than  one  or  two 
present  or  past  members  whose  record  did  not  show  them  to 
have  lived  at  some  time  upon  the  proceeds  of  prostitution 
in  one  form  or  another.  They  claim,  however,  that  all 
members  who  have  been  convicted  of  a  crime  are  expelled 
from  the  organization  when  the  proof  of  that  fact  has  been 
submitted,  the  offense  apparently  being  not  the  commission 
of  a  crime,  but  conviction.  It  would  appear  that  this  pro 
cedure  is  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  the  individual  if 
possible,  and,  failing  in  that,  of  freeing  the  association  from 
criticism. 

Finding  no  evidence  of  an  organized  traffic  in  women, 
but  of  a  traffic  carried  on  by  individuals,  we  have  made  a 
special  and  careful  investigation  along  this  line.  Owing  to 
the  publicity  given  to  the  inquiry  at  its  inception,  it  has  been 
difficult  to  get  legal  evidence  of  the  actual  purchase  and  sale 
of  women  for  immoral  purposes,  and  our  investigators  have 
been  informed  in  different  quarters  that  a  number  of  form 
erly  active  dealers  in  women  had  either  temporarily  gone 
out  of  business  or  had  transferred  their  activities  to  other 
cities.  However,  five  self-declared  dealers  in  women  had 
agreed  upon  various  occasions  to  supply  women  to  our 
agents,  but  because  of  their  extreme  caution  and  the  fear 
aroused  by  the  continued  sitting  of  this  Grand  Jury,  these 
promises  were  fulfilled  in  only  two  instances,  in  each  of 
which  two  girls  were  secured  for  our  agents  at  a  price,  in 
the  one  case  of  $60  each  and  in  the  other  of  $75  each. 
Indictments  have  been  found  against  these  two  persons;  one 
pleaded  guilty  and  the  other  was  convicted  on  trial. 

All  of  these  parties  boasted  to  our  investigators  of  their 
extensive  local  and  interstate  operations  in  the  recent  past. 
They  specifically  mentioned  the  cities  to  which  they  had 
forwarded  women  and  described  their  operations  as  having 
at  that  time  been  free  from  danger  of  detection. 

Our  investigators  also   testified   as  to  the  methods  and 


WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC  475 

means  used  by  these  people  in  replenishing  the  supply  of 
Women  and  in  entrapping  innocent  girls. 
Quoting  again  from  Your  Honor's  charge: 

"  This  traffic  in  women,  it  is  charged,  follows  two  main 
objects:  First,  the  procuring  of  women  of  previous  chaste 
character,  who  through  force,  duress,  or  deceit  are  finally 
made  to  live  lives  of  prostitution;  second,  the  procuring  of 
women  who  are  already  prostitutes  and  placing  them  with 
their  consent  in  houses  where  they  may  ply  their  trade." 

Under  the  first  heading,  namely,  the  procuring  of  women 
of  previous  chaste  character,  we  find  the  most  active  force 
to  be  the  so-called  "  pimp."  There  are  in  the  County  of 
New  York  a  considerable  and  increasing  number  of  these 
creatures  who  live  wholly  or  in  part  upon  the  earnings  of 
girls  or  women  who  practice  prostitution.  With  promises 
of  m  rriage,  of  fine  clothing,  of  greater  personal  independ 
ence,  these  men  often  induce  girls  to  live  with  them  and 
after  a  brief  period,  with  threats  of  exposure  or  of  physical 
violence,  force  them  to  go  upon  the  streets  as  common  pros 
titutes  and  to  turn  over  the  proceeds  of  their  shame  to  their 
seducers,  who  live  largely,  if  not  wholly,  upon  the  money 
thus  earned  by  their  victims.  This  system  is  illustrated  in  an 
indictment  and  conviction  where  the  defendant  by  such 
promises  induced  a  girl  of  fifteen  to  leave  her  home  and 
within  two  weeks  put  her  on  the  streets  as  a  common  pros 
titute. 

We  find  also  that  these  persons  ill-treat  and  abuse  the 
women  with  whom  they  live  and  beat  them  at  times  in  order 
to  force  them  to  greater  activity  and  longer  hours  of  work 
on  the  streets.  This  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of  another 
defendant  who  was  indicted  and  convicted  for  brutally 
slashing  with  a  knife  the  face  of  "  his  girl  "  and  leaving  her 
disfigured  for  life,  merely  because  she  was  no  longer  willing 
to  prostitute  herself  for  his  benefit. 

In  this  connection  mention  should  be  made  of  the  moving 


,47<5  WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC 

picture  shows  as  furnishing  to  this  class  of  persons  an  op 
portunity  for  leading  girls  into  a  life  of  shame.  These 
shows  naturally  attract  large  numbers  of  children,  and 
while  the  law  provides  that  no  child  under  the  age  of  six 
teen  shall  be  allowed  to  attend  them  unaccompanied  by 
parent  or  guardian,  it  is  a  fact,  as  shown  by  the  number  of 
arrests  and  convictions  that  the  law  is  frequently  violated. 
Evidence  upon  which  indictments  have  been  found  and  con 
victions  subsequently  secured,  has  been  given  which  shows 
that,  in  spite  of  the  activities  of  the  authorities  in  watching 
these  places,  many  girls  owe  their  ruin  to  frequenting  them. 
An  instance  of  the  above  is  the  case  of  a  defendant  indicted 
by  this  Grand  Jury  and  convicted  before  Your  Honor,  where 
three  girls  met  as  many  young  men  at  a  Harlem  moving 
picture  show.  At  the  end  of  the  performance,  the  young 
men  were  taken  by  an  employee  of  the  place  through  a 
door  in  the  rear  into  a  connecting  building — used  as  a  fire 
exit  for  the  moving  picture  show — where  they  met  the  girls 
and  all  passed  the  night  together. 

The  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Children 
has  furnished  statistics  showing  that  since  the  I3th  day  of 
December,  1906,  33  cases  of  rape  and  seduction  originated  in 
moving  picture  shows,  in  some  instances  the  perpetrators 
being  the  employees  of  the  shows. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  reference  to  bring  an  indict 
ment  against  the  moving  picture  show,  which  under  proper 
restrictions  may  be  an  important  and  valuable  educational 
and  recreative  factor,  but  rather  to  point  out  possible  dan 
gers  inherent  in  performances  carried  on  in  the  darkness  and 
the  importance  of  the  observance  of  safeguards  by  parents 
or  guardians,  and  of  the  strict  enforcement  of  the  law  for 
the  protection  of  children. 

Under  the  second  heading  in  that  portion  of  Your  Honor's 
charge  quoted  above,  which  refers  to  the  procuring  of 
women  who  are  already  prostitutes  and  placing  them  with 
their  consent  in  houses  where  they  may  ply  their  trade,  the 


WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC  477 

Grand  Jury  has  made  a  special  study  of  the  class  of  dis 
orderly  houses  commonly  known  as  "  Raines-Law  Hotels," 
the  chief  business  of  many  of  which  is  to  provide  a  place 
where  women  of  the  streets  may  take  their  customers.  The 
testimony  given  shows  that  girls  who  brought  their  patrons 
to  certain  hotels  of  this  class  were  allowed  rebates  on  the 
amount  charged  their  patrons  for  rooms.  Upon  the  evi 
dence  brought  before  us,  indictments  were  found  against 
seven  of  the  most  notorious  of  these  hotels. 

The  abuse  which  has  grown  up  in  the  conversion  of  the 
so-called  massage  and  manicure  parlor  into  a  disorderly 
house,  frequently  of  the  most  perverted  kind,  has  received 
our  careful  study  under  this  same  heading.  A  special  in 
vestigation  has  been  made  of  some  125  massage  and  mani 
cure  parlors,  in  this  county.  Less  than  half  of  these  estab 
lishments  were  found  to  be  equipped  for  legitimate  pur 
poses,  most  of  them  being  nothing  but  disorderly  houses. 
The  operators  in  such  places  had  no  knowledge  of  mas 
sage  treatment,  and  in  certain  cases  where  certificates  of 
alleged  massage  institutes  were  on  the  walls  of  the  premises 
they  frankly  admitted  that  they  had  no  training  in  massage 
and  did  not  even  know  the  persons  whose  signatures  ap 
peared  on  the  certificates. 

In  view  of  the  above,  it  would  seem  important  that  these 
parlors  should  be  licensed  by  the  Health  Department  of  the 
city  and  that  all  operators  in  them  should  also  have  a 
license  from  some  approved  health  or  medical  authority, 
and  further,  that  proper  supervision  should  be  exercised  to 
insure  their  operation  for  the  legitimate  purposes  for  which 
they  are  licensed. 

The  spreading  of  prostitution  in  its  various  forms  from 
the  well-known  disorderly  house  into  apartment  and  tene 
ment  houses  presents  a  very  grave  danger  to  the  home.  It- 
is  inevitable  that  children  who  have  daily  evidence  of  the 
apparent  comfort,  ease,  and  oftentimes  luxury  in  which 
women  of  this  class  live  should  not  only  become  hardened  to 


478  WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC 

the  evil,  but  be  easily  drawn  into  the  life.  The  existing  laws 
for  the  suppression  of  this  vice  in  apartment  and  tenement 
houses  should  be  most  rigorously  enforced  and  if  necessary 
additional  legislation  enacted. 

But  of  the  evils  investigated  under  this  head,  the  most 
menacing  is  the  so-called  "  pimp  "  who,  as  already  stated, 
while  often  active  in  seducing  girls,  is,  to  what  seems  to  be  an 
increasing  extent,  living  on  the  earnings  of  the  professional 
prostitute,  constantly  driven  by  him  to  greater  activity  and 
more  degrading  practices. 

We  do  not  find  that  these  persons  are  formally  organ 
ized,  but  it  would  appear  that  the  majority  of  the  women  of 
the  street,  as  well  as  many  of  those  who  practice  prostitution 
in  houses  or  flats,  are  controlled  by  them  and  usually  pay 
their  entire  earnings  to  them.  They  prescribe  the  hours  and 
working  places  for  these  women,  assist  them  in  getting  cus 
tomers,  protect  them  from  interference  when  possible,  and 
when  the  women  are  arrested  do  what  they  can  to  procure 
their  release.  While  "  their  women  "  are  at  work,  they 
spend  much  of  their  time  in  saloons  and  other  resorts  where 
they  gather  socially.  Although  operating  individually,  their 
common  interest  leads  them  to  cooperate  for  mutual  protec 
tion  or  for  the  recovery  of  women  who  may  desert  them,  and 
for  the  maintenance  of  their  authority  over  their  particular 
women.  It  is  an  unwritten  law  among  these  men  that  the 
authority  of  the  individual  over  the  woman  or  women  con 
trolled  by  him  is  unquestioned  by  his  associates  to  what 
ever  extreme  it  may  be  carried. 

To  obtain  a  conviction  against  one  of  this  class  is  most 
difficult,  for  through  fear  or  personal  liking,  "  his  woman  " 
is  loath  to  become  a  witness  against  him,  and  without  her 
evidence  conviction  is  almost  impossible. 

Whatever  one  may  think  of  the  woman  who  adopts  the 
profession  of  a  prostitute  by  choice,  all  must  agree  that  the 
man  who  in  cold  blood  exploits  a  woman's  body  for  his 
own  support  and  profit  is  vile  and  despicable  beyond  ex- 


WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC  479 

pression.  Only  through  the  arousing  of  an  intelligent  and 
determined  public  sentiment  which  will  back  up  the  forces 
of  law  in  their  effort  to  ferret  out  and  bring  to  justice  the 
members  of  this  debased  class,  is  there  hope  of  stamping 
out  those  vilest  of  human  beings  found  to-day  in  the  leading 
cities  of  this  and  other  lands. 


In  view  of  the  foregoing  we  recommend : 

1.  That  no  effort  be  spared  in  bringing  to  justice  the 
so-called  "  pimp."     When  the  character  and  prevalence  of 
these  creatures  are  more  fully  realized  and  public  sentiment 
aroused    regarding   them,    the   inadequate   punishment   now 
imposed    should   be   increased    and   every   legitimate   means 
devised  and  put  into  execution  to  exterminate  them. 

2.  That  the  existing  laws  be  more  rigidly  enforced  to 
safeguard  the  patrons  of  the  moving  picture  shows,  and  that 
parents  and  guardians  exercise  more  careful  supervision  over 
their  children  in  connection  with  their  attendance  upon  these 
shows. 

3.  That  vigorous  efforts  be  made  to  minimize  the  pos 
sibility   of   the   Raines-Law   Hotel   becoming   a   disorderly 
house,  and  that  where  necessary  proper  supervision  and  in 
spection  looking  toward  that  end  be  provided. 

4.  That  the  so-called  massage  and  manicure  parlors  be  put 
under  the  control  of  the  Health  Department;  that  a  license 
from  this  department  be  required  for  their  operation;  that 
certificates  be  granted  to  operators  only  by  some  approved 
medical  authority,  and  that  proper  measures  be  taken  to  en 
force  these  laws. 

5.  That  the  laws  relating  to  prostitution  in  apartment 
and  tenement  houses  be  rigidly  enforced,  and  that  the  present 
laws  be  supplemented  if  necessary. 

6.  That   a   commission   be   appointed   by   the   Mayor   to 
make  a  careful  study  of  the  laws  relating  to  and  the  methods 


48o  WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC 

of  dealing  with  the  social  evil  in  the  leading  cities  of  this 
country  and  of  Europe,  with  a  view  to  devising  the  most 
effective  means  of  minimizing  the  evil  in  this  city. 

JOHN  D.  ROCKEFELLER,  JR., 

Foreman. 

GEO.  F.  CRANE,  Secretary. 
Dated,  June  9,  1910. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

305  De  Neve  Drive  -  Parking  Lot  17  •  Box  951388 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1388 
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